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CDIVRIGHT DEPOSIT 



The Voice Eternal 

A SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY 

OF THE FINE ART OF 

BEING WELL 

By 

Thomas Parker Boyd 

Author of 

"The How and Why of the Emmanuel Movement" 



The "Good Medicine'' Books 
No. 2 



Berkeley, Cal. 

THE EMMANUEL PRESS 

Publishers 

1912 



tf'"' 






Copyright, 1912. 
by Thomas Parker Boyd. 



©CI.A330173 






TABLE OF CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

Preface 5 

I. The Life Within 7 

II. A Shining Pathway 15 

III. The Good Medicine 23 

IV. "The Pronoun of Power" 31 

V. The Man on Crutches 43 

VI. The Path of Least Resistance - - - - 54 

VII. The Parable of the Christmas Tree - - 65 

VIII. The Last Thing in the World - - - - 73 

IX. The Christ Within - - - " 81 

X. The Spiritual Basis of Health - - - 94 

XI. The "Word" of Well-Being .... 108 

XII. The Law of Suggestion 118 

XIII. Material xVccessories to Health - - - - 130 

XIV. A New Generation 144 

XV. Emotional Chemistry - - 161 

XVI. Formulas and Affirmations for Self Help 168 



PREFACE. 

HpHE purpose of this book is to furnish a 
-*• statement of the Spiritual philosophy of life 
with special reference to physical health, as 
the author's book, "The How and Why of the 
Emmanuel Movement ' ' was a study of the mental 
forces having to do with the same subject. 

If any apology were needed for a new book it 
could be found in the fact that every marked 
advance in human welfare has had its literature, 
so that those who could not enjoy the instruc- 
tion and enthusiasm of its leaders might at least 
be intelligently informed as to the underlying 
principles and methods of the advance movement. 
The multiplying of books in the new healing phil- 
osophy of truth which has taken so strong a place 
in modern religious ideas today is justified in the 
fact that the same truth from a new T view point, 
or in differing phraseology, as it is projected 
through different personalities, gives it an accept- 
ance and helpfulness to many which it could not 
otherwise have. 

No claim is made for the originality of any 
ideas here expressed. The substance of these 
chapters have been given in the author's lectures, 
to his classes, and to his patients until their help- 
fulness has been clearly demonstrated, and many 
urgent requests have been made to have them put 
into more permanent and available form. 

These chapters are sent forth in the hope that 
they may bring help to a steadily increasing com- 
pany of people in the church who are drifting 
away in search of those material benefits upon 



Preface 



which so little emphasis has been laid by the 
church that they have felt that the church no 
longer offers them the comforts so much needed, 
and which they feel they have a right to expect 
in this strenuous age of living. Also to the other 
class in the church whose loyalty to her who is 
the mother of us all which will not allow them to 
wander afield in search of the truth and help 
they need, and who suffer needlessly because they 
cannot give up so much that is tried and true 
for that which is not tested by time. The purpose 
is to interpret the truth in the language of mod- 
ern thought so that these good people may see that 
every blessing of the good God, both temporal and 
spiritual, is available right where they are with- 
out the necessity of forsaking the leadership of 
the trained ministers of religion for that of self- 
appointed vendors of vagaries, and without de- 
priving themselves of the advice of trained phy- 
sicians which they often need. Many of the medi- 
cal profession are using more and more the agen- 
cies of mental and spiritual forces, and their con- 
tributions to the advance of a sound mental ther- 
apeutics is known to anyone who cares to know, 
although it is usually marked by a conservatism 
born probably of an instinctive distrust of illog- 
ical statement and unreasoning enthusiasm. If 
these purposes are served the author will feel 
amply repaid for the effort. 

Thomas Parker Boyd. 



Berkeley, Cal., 1912. 



The Voice Eternal. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE LIFE WITHIN. 

LOVE of life is the primal impulse. 
Self-preservation is the first law of 
nature. "As thyself" is the final test of 
man's noblest impulse — love. The record 
of Earth's greatest example of altruism 
does not suppress the fact that it was 
"for the joy that was set before him" 
that "he endured the cross." Existence 
is sweet, and if we consent to its limita- 
tion in one sphere it is with the distinct 
understanding that it will have propor- 
tionally larger action in another sphere, 
for the abundant life is the flying goal 
toward which we move. This instinct for 
complete life is constitutional with us; 
we can no more deny it than we can deny 
ourselves. The pilgrim across the world 
of sense and sensation voices only one 
cry — "life." And what is life? The 
answer varies according to one's experi- 
ence of living. "It is a vapour," answers 
one. " It is the response to environment, ' ' 



8 The Voice Eternal 

says another. "It is to know God/ 9 is the 
response of still another. "It is the grati- 
fication of every impulse/' "It is only 
good morning, good night, and good bye" 
are other answers. "Life is a mode of 
motion/' says my scientific friend. And 
what is motion? "A manifestation of 
force." And what is force? "Active 
energy" — and that? "The unseen poten- 
tiality that fills and constitutes all things 
— an universal substance out of which all 
material things appear, and back into 
which they disappear as unseen elements 
of energy that defy analysis. Of this in- 
finitely extended substance all things are 
made and by it they consist." Now this 
view harmonizes with the statement of 
that ancient theologian and philosopher 
who said, "The things which are seen 
were not made of things which do ap- 
pear"; and furthermore, "The things 
which are seen are temporal, but the 
things which are not seen are eternal. ' ? To 
this infinite substance acting with benefi- 
cent purpose and intelligent procedure, 
we attribute personality, and say, "of him 
are all things." Call it Infinite sub- 
stance, or mind, or spirit, it is the source 



The Life Within 



and the goal of existence. We came from 
it. We return to it. In this excursion 
out from it we find set all the elements 
of a drama, ranging all the way from 
the comic to the tragic, accordingly as we 
take life's shifting scenes too lightly or 
too seriously. It takes most people a life- 
time to discover that, to our senses, things 
stand in inverse ratio to their reality and 
value. To our sense-perception, matter 
and its associated sensations of ease, pain, 
pleasure, etc., are the dominant things, 
while to mental and spiritual perceptions, 
mind with its attendant products of 
thought and truth are the supreme facts. 
Matter is changing and transient, but 
substance or spirit is unchanging and 
eternal. 

And this Infinite substance, spirit, 
mind, life, the source and content of all 
things, is one. It exhibits itself in myriad 
forms, but be it star or stone, herb, bird, 
or man, it is one life, one substance. Just 
as the ocean whose substance fills, and 
whose heart-throb pulsates throughout 
every gulf, bay, cove, and strait, leaving 
each its individuality and relative impor- 
tance, according to the volume of ocean 



10 The Voice Eternal 

it expresses, yet retaining its claim on 
each as part of the whole, so does this 
Infinite substance find form and expres- 
sion in innumerable individual cases, each 
important according to the degree of the 
Infinite life finding expression, yet each 
a part of the One life. And the law of 
expressing the Infinite life divides these 
individuals into many varieties of being. 
For example, the living rock obeys one 
part of the law of expression, and it has 
inertia or rest. The worm obeys two parts 
of the law, and it adds motion to its ex- 
pression of life. The bird obeys three 
parts of the law and adds flight and song ; 
and the more complex the organism, the 
greater number of laws it can obey, the 
higher is the order of life, because the 
larger and richer is the expression and 
experience of the infinite life. Now man, 
the most complex of all material organ- 
isms, can respond to more of these laws, 
and hence gives the most complete ex- 
pression of the Infinite life, for above 
the animal kind, he adds reason, judg- 
ment, imagination, faith, hope, love, and 
other attributes and qualities of the di- 
vine life unknown save in elemental forms 



The Life Within 11 

to the lower orders of existence, Now 
these faculties go to make up the image 
of the Creator within us, and these moral 
and spiritual qualities are concrete ex- 
pressions in us of the divine character 
which must otherwise remain a dreamy 
abstraction. 

There is nothing in us that we did not 
receive from the Infinite source, "the Fa- 
ther of the spirits of all flesh." Nothing 
has been evolved in man, nor will be, that 
was not involved in the first living cell. 
Our entire equipment for expressing the 
divine life, together with "the power both 
to will and to do" is of that Infinite sub- 
stance whose image we are. Yet because 
of the accident of time or place or condi- 
tion of birth, the influence of heredity, or 
other causes, few of us express it in equal 
degree. We have to confess that one man 
manifests more of the divine life than 
another, because he furnishes, consciously 
or otherwise, a better channel through 
which the divine life may flow r . He has 
more avenues of expression, and is able 
to keep them open, and hence is a better 
medium through which the divine life 
may speak. Or to use a technical figure 



12 The Voice Eternal 

of commercial life, as the amperage and 
voltage — one having reference to the vol- 
ume and the other to the intensity of the 
electric current — determine the action 
and results of that subtle force, so in a 
life of large endowment, of many gifts, 
of ten talents, the amperage is large, and 
the possibilities for expression of the di- 
vine life are great; but if the voltage is 
low, the sense of duty is blunted, the esti- 
mation of privilege is small, the aim of 
life is ignoble, then the dynamics of the 
will are inoperative and the results are 
small. If in another the amperage is 
small, the capacity limited, the gifts few, 
yet the voltage is high, sense of duty ex- 
alted, ideals noble, purposes inflexible, 
then the dynamics of the will enable him 
to blaze and burn his way through the 
world like a live wire of Omnipotence 
that he is. Such accomplish more, mani- 
fest more of the divine life than the large 
amperage, but low voltage people. But 
does the ten-talent man, large amperage, 
have correspondingly high voltage, we 
shall find such an expression of the divine 
life as to brand him a genius, and write 
his name in the gallery of the immortals. 



The Life Within 13 

In other words, the endowments of a 
man's life are things determined outside 
of himself. His native qualifications come 
into life with him, but the potency of his 
life for results is determined within him- 
self. The development of his gifts to 
their utmost capacity, the cultivation of 
nobility of purpose, the concentration of 
his energies to the chosen tasks, in 
fact, all that means the mastery of self, 
and the mastery of the world forces 
about him, are contained in the sov- 
ereignty of his own will. With the am- 
perage of life he has no concern, with 
its voltage he has everything to do. He 
can do anything that he wants to do and 
believes that he can do, the very fact that 
he feels the impulse being the sure sign 
that the life within him inspires the de- 
sire, and at the same time promises the 
power of fulfillment. He can be anything 
he desires, for his desire is the longing 
of the Infinite life to find expression * 
through him in that special way. He has 
only to call out the forces of the life with- 
in and set them to the task, knowing that 
" faithful is he that hath promised who 
also will do it." And herein lies the solu- 



14 The Voice Eternal 

tion to the riddle of existence — To take 
a part of the Infinite life, give it individu- 
ality by incarnating it in human flesh, 
multiplying and projecting it through hu- 
man personality, polishing and refining it 
through the vicissitudes of material en- 
vironment, until it comes to express so 
much of the Infinite character that to 
have seen it is to have seen God. And it 
must be held as a cardinal principle that 
the capacity to express life is an expan- 
sive thing, as surely as the power to do 
so is a cumulative force. The latent pos- 
sibilities of divinity are in us awaiting the 
task of development. They are unlimited, 
so that a man knows not what he shall 
be, but if he accepts his task and does it, 
he shall be like God. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE SHINING PATHWAY. 

LIFE is not stationary, nor can be. The 
living body is forever changing by 
the ceaseless vibrations of the life within. 
The mental powers are forever built up 
or depleted by the thoughts that flow from 
them, and the truth that is discovered by 
them, and that reacts upon them. The 
bronze figure that stands in the midst of 
the park fountain through whose uplifted 
fingers a stream of water rises until it 
breaks into a mist and falls to the pool 
below, is a picture of a human life through 
which the tides of the divine life with its 
truth and power move forever onward. 
They make no tarrying. Certain by- 
products which go to make up character 
abide, and even character is a progres- 
sive thing. 

To build up and preserve his body man 
uses the material forms that are com- 
pounds of the infinite substance. In the 
using it yields up certain elements of life 
that keep the body living. The food he 
eats, the water he drinks, the air 
he breathes, all are yielding up their life 



16 The Voice Eternal 

to him. This is everywhere true, for the 
living rock yields up its life to the soil, 
the soil yields up its life to vegetation, 
vegetation in turn to the animal, and the 
animal yields up its life to man, and man 
yields up his life to and for his fellow, and 
this but illustrates the method by which 
the Infinite life ministers to man of its 
boundless store, and expresses itself in his 
body, disclosing a shining pathway up 
which man moves to God, for the mental 
and spiritual life are ministered after the 
same principle. Not only was man a 
thought before he was a thinker but he 
continues to have his growing mental life 
by feeding on the living truths which 
other men have discovered, and for which 
they have laid down their lives, and also 
on those which he discovers by responding 
to the vibrations of that Infinite life with- 
in him, and for which he is ready to lay 
down his life. All his emotions, finer feel- 
ings, aspirations, and longing, and the 
more spiritual activities are responses to 
the stimulus of the divine character find- 
ing expression in him. We are now ready 
to quote, with the assurance of its mean- 
ing and truth, a saying of the apostle, 



The Shining Pathway 17 

"In God we live and move and have our 
being. ' ' Man lives out his life in the life 
of God, and he cannot live apart from 
him. His business in the world is to ex- 
press the human life in the terms of God. 
That is his task, although he may make 
sorry work of it. He may turn his divin- 
ity to diabolism, but he can never success- 
fully deny his birthright, nor permanently 
quench the flame of the divine life, for God 
cannot die, nor can these divine attributes 
be so stifled or eradicated that they will 
not rise again to struggle for mastery, 
and at last find perfect expression. We 
are living out our lives in the life of God. 
Now the converse of the foregoing is 
also true. God lives out his life in the life 
of the world and all things therein, his 
highest expression being man. As the 
mountain is worn down by erosion until 
the granite becomes the soil of the valley, 
clothed with vegetation, radiant with 
color, fragrant with odors and golden 
with fruitage, so is the material expres- 
sion of divinity moved up into its highest 
form, man, and on him and through him 
the divine life plays until his ani- 
malism, and crudities, and credulities, are 



18 The Voice Eternal 

smoothed out, and his human conscious- 
ness blooms out into God-consciousness, 
and the fruits of the living spirit in him 
are manifest. It may sound easy, but the 
process is difficult. God is not having a 
good time. It has taken heat and cold, 
earthquakes and aeons of time to get the 
earth ready to manifest forth men, and 
he has been a long time trying to wrestle 
the world of men up to princedom, and 
although the task is slow, the end is sure. 
In every age some man has attained it, 
such as Enoch, who walked with God, 
Abraham, who was a friend of God, and 
Jacob, who was a prince of God. 

To make the thought still more definite 
and significant, it is said at least three 
times in the Old Testament that "God 
clothed himself with a man," in each case 
for a specific purpose, and also to show 
to their generation, and to us, what God 
can do for a man who comes to realize his 
own divine nature, and will allow the In- 
finite life of God to have full expression 
in him. The tragedy of it is that few of 
us accept our birthright in all that 
it means, and fewer still are bold enough 
to enter into and claim our heritage of 



The Shining Pathway 19 

God dwelling in us. For in very truth 
lie lives out his life in the life of the world 
and of man. In us he lives and moves 
and has his being. It is in the sons of men 
that the divine life finds perfect expres- 
sion in the terms of humanity. Divine love, 
and pity, and compassion, and all other 
similar qualities are, and must remain, 
unknown quantities to us save as we see 
and know them in the lives of men with 
whom God clothes himself. 

The great teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, 
kept before his disciples the secret of that 
life of his, so simple in its setting and so 
marvelous in its power, by repeatedly de- 
claring that the words which he spoke and 
the works which he did, were not his but 
his Father's. Now as God clothed himself 
with that man of Nazareth, and made him 
to manifest forth the oneness of the hu- 
man and the divine life, so Jesus prayed 
that his disciples might realize their one- 
ness with God as he realized it. Yet with 
all the perversity of human misunder- 
standing, we misread the words and try to 
foster a oneness with our fellows which is 
impossible until we first realize our one- 
ness with God, which in the mind of Jesus 



20 The Voice Eternal 

was of supreme importance. This alone 
could enable them to do the work that he 
did, and even greater works than he did, 
so the burden of his most wonderful re- 
corded prayer was for the realization of 
this oneness. Here, then, is an enigma 
in the mathematics of spiritual life, that 
one and one make one, never more, never 
less, and He is the one, or you are the one 
as you have the boldness to claim it. This 
is a flying goal. Man never is, but al- 
ways to be blest. 

Of all those qualities of character that 
place the stamp of the divine character 
upon man, such as love, joy, peace, pa- 
tience, etc., few of us bring to any degree 
of perfection more than one or two. Of 
all man's forty and more faculties only 
one, two or three at most reach any degree 
of perfection or fruition in this sphere of 
existence, but we see enough to know what 
we shall be, when perfect oneness is real- 
ized and manifested, when every divine 
quality shall find perfect expression, and 
every faculty shall reach its zenith, mani- 
festing the power that worketh in us, for 
it discloses a shining pathway of attain- 
ment which shall share here and hereafter 



The Shining Pathway 21 

the throne of the divine power. Here, be- 
cause the consciousness of this divine dig- 
nity begins here, "Beloved now are we 
the Sons of God, and it doth not yet ap- 
pear what we shall be, but we know that 
we shall be like him when he shall ap- 
pear." Now this appearance is not some 
flaming apparition in the sky, appealing 
to the optic nerve, but rather a subjective 
apprehension by the person who believes 
God to be the Supreme Good, and hon- 
estly desires to know him, that he may car- 
ry out his perfect will. Of such said Je- 
sus, "Blessed are the pure in heart for 
they shall see God." Seeing God, he sees 
everything else in its true proportions. He 
sees in himself the image of God. He 
knows that his character, his purposes, 
and his whole life are at one with God. He 
sees that divine image in every man. Lov- 
ing God he must love his image. Hatred 
can no longer have a place in him. Fear 
is cast out by a perfect love. Now are 
we the sons of God. \ 

A Sunday school teacher described the 
character of Jesus of Nazareth without 
calling his name and asked her class who it 
was, was surprised when one little hand 



22 The Voice Eternal 

went up and one little voice said, " That's 
my mamma — it sounds just like her." The 
child was right for he was "the express 
image of God's person" and so was 
mother, for the pure mind of the child 
could see no difference between the love 
of God exhibited in mother and the love 
of God in Jesus of Nazareth, for the sim- 
ple reason that there is no difference. "It 
doth not appear what we shall be." The 
perfect manifestation is here in its incep- 
tion, and hereafter in its completeness. 
All of man's faculties are to be 
brought to completeness. For that 
purpose all the years of time and 
the aeons of eternity are God's and ours. 
All the worlds now and to be, all the poten- 
cies now at work and yet to unfold are for 
this one thing, — to bring man to full God- 
likeness. We have entered a way of prog- 
ress that has no limit to its advance, a 
shining pathway through the earth and 
heaven that has no noontide height from 
which to slowly and sadly decline but that 
moves onward and upward to the throne of 
God, and the perfect day. 



CHAPTEE III. 

THE GOOD MEDICINE 

A MAN there was who had lost sight of 
his parentage and lived for years as 
an orphan. One day he had an invasion 
of divine joy when he learned that his 
father, a wealthy and benevolent man, still 
lived and yearned for his son that he 
might bestow upon him the things that 
were his by right. And the dawn of this 
truth of the indwelling life of God, the 
inherent oneness of all life in Him, not 
only brings to the mind a joy that "doeth 
good like a medicine/' but it ushers in the 
full day of an heritage which alone is 
adequate to meet the demands of the life 
within us. 

Having accepted the fact of his divine 
heritage, and having fully satisfied him- 
self as to his title, he begins to take an in- 
ventory of its content. The first of these 
is that God is love, truth, health, peace, 
power, plenty, and that hatred, fear, false- 
hood, sickness, disease, weakness, and pov- 
erty can have no place in the perfectly 
manifested life of the Infinite God. Apart 
from his material forms of expression, 



24 The Voice Eternal 

God is not sick, neither has he pain, nor 
disease, nor any such thing. 

In connection with this process of work- 
ing out the Infinite life into material ex- 
pression, we have to accept the patent fact 
of pain and disease of the body and dis- 
tempers of the mind. We can no more 
deny the fact of them than we can deny 
the reality of earthquakes in rending the 
earth's crust and upheaving mountains, 
or the reality of the pain caused by the 
tooth of time in wearing down those moun- 
tains into fertile valleys, ready for rich 
harvests. We may turn an intellectual 
somersault and deny the reality of pain, 
by denying the reality of the material 
forms in which pain is felt. Let it be 
granted for a moment that the seen things 
are temporal, it does not alter the fact 
that they are forms of expression of the 
Infinite Substance or Life, and their real- 
ity cannot be questioned even though their 
forms change or disappear. And even if 
our philosophy could persuade us of the 
non-reality of pain, our experiences of 
toothache, ague, or ptomaine poisoning are 
sufficient to smash our ideal philosophy, 
unless we have lost the rational faculties. 



The Good Medicine 25 

We have to accept pain, etc., as inev- 
itable attendants upon the transformation 
going on in the material life of God round 
about us and in us. And this fact becomes 
at once an interpretation of our experien- 
ces and a challenge to us to accept and en- 
ter upon our heritage. This was evidently 
the view of St. Paul when he said, "For 
we know that the whole creation groaneth 
and travaileth together in pain till now 
. . . waiting for the manifestation of the 
Sons of God." Everywhere there is the 
challenge to move up to higher expression 
of divine life, and alwaj^s that movement 
is attended with pain. Take the seed you 
plant in the springtime in the soft, warm 
loam of earth. It is a life bound up by a 
shell, narrow and limited. Pretty soon 
sun and rain and the influences of the 
earth move upon it, and the life within the 
seed hears the call to come up into higher 
life expression, and there is such a re- 
sponse that at last it can be no longer 
bound, and there comes the pain of a new 
birth, the seed splits its shell and comes 
forth out of littleness and narrowness to 
larger expression of life in beauty, fra- 
grance, and fruitage. So a bird's egg moves 



26 The Voice Eternal 

up from a life within a shell into the larg- 
er expression of life as found in song and 
flight, but it is attended by the agony of a 
birth. Now man himself is a creature of 
time, of the senses, and of animalism. His 
experiences are mostly of his material life. 
One day there begins to play upon the life 
within him the truth that makes men free 
through a song, a prayer, a beautiful ser- 
vice, or a good life, until he hears the call 
of the divine life and there comes the hour 
of decision, the agony of a new birth, and 
he becomes a citizen of eternity conscious 
of the indwelling God. 

At every step of this moving upward 
into larger life, from seed to man, pain is 
seen to be an attendant fact. The seed or 
bird or man could well say, " Thank you 
pain; by you I have come into higher, 
larger life." Pain and disease may be 
results, but they are not punishments. 
Rather shall we think of them as signal 
calls announcing wrong conditions and 
challenging us to move up out of them. 
They are things we have received from 
our ancestors ; or have inherited from past 
years of wrong thinking and wrong living ; 
or violations of the laws of life, consciously 



The Good Medicine 27 

or otherwise, whose penalties have staid 
with us over-long because we did not learn 
their meaning, till they have become en- 
throned in us and obsessed us, and having 
some psychic quality, they refuse to "go 
out into the deep" without a struggle, or 
a mighty, authoritative command. 

Accepting the heritage of your oneness 
with the Infinite life, talk with yourself : 
"Why pain? God who dwelleth in me has 
not pain, nor is he sick, nor has he dis- 
ease. If I have it, it is the infallible symp- 
tom that the Infinite life is leading up to 
some higher expression of itself that as 
yet it does not fully manifest within me. 
There is some obstruction in heart, mind, 
will, or imagination, that impedes the full 
tides of the Infinite life with His resistless 
health and perfect peace. It is a call to 
prepare for a fuller invasion of the divine 
life. The obstruction must be found and 
removed. It may be error of thought or 
action, one or both. I set myself now to 
the task of setting to right the inner re- 
cesses of my life, so that there shall be 
perfect harmony with the divine life, and 
hence perfect health. " 

In this process of opening up the chan- 



28 The Voice Eternal 

iiels for the flow of the Infinite life, there 
is as much to unlearn as to learn. A good 
memory is invaluable, while a good f orget- 
tery is above the price of rubies. The 
trouble is that we forget the things we 
should remember, and vice versa. Let us 
now unlearn some things. Most of our 
ideas of right and wrong have been learned 
under the tutelage of "Thou shalt not." 
As long as we live under this negative mo- 
tive, we invite fear and worry and the 
whole brood of attendant ills; and under 
the reign of fear, the things we fear sooner 
or later come upon us. Our fear is the 
invitation to them to come in and stay. 
We need to shift our point of view, the 
motiving of our acts over to the positive 
side of things. "Thou shalt" is the posi- 
tive, constructive side of the divine law 
that makes love and not fear the motive, 
and this is the highest expression of the 
divine life within you — "God is Love." 
Dwelling here in the motive of love, you 
can stand at the gates of the City of Man's 
Soul and meet all such visitors as fear and 
worry, with such calmness and assurance 
of the presence of Infinite love and peace 
and power that they will vanish away and 
leave you in peace. 



The Good Medicine 29 

And this impelling force of love will not 
be a passing spasm of emotional joy, but 
a glorious joy of service, a sense of divine 
right and place in the world. The common- 
est task becomes clothed with the charac- 
ter of a sacrament ; work will have a new 
dignity; rest a new refreshment; sleep 
a sublime renewing; eating will be no 
longer a bolting of things down with just 
enough chewing to keep the food from 
scratching the skin off the throat, or for 
mere gustatory pleasure, but a process 
whose thoroughness measures an imparta- 
tion of the divine life. Keeping the laws 
of life will not be a perfunctory winning a 
bonbon, or " getting home to heaven," but 
the spontaneous action of love that finds 
obedience to the law the only means of per- 
fectly expressing the divine life in us. 

Prepare then for this invasion of love, 
health, peace, and power by opening every 
avenue of life for the flood tides of the In- 
finite Being. Put away fear, worry, 
doubt, tradition, negatives and self- 
limitations of every kind. Replace 
them with positives. Do it now. If 
you have accepted the fact of your 
oneness with the Infinite life, yet do 



30 The Voice Eternal 

not realize the experience of its perfect 
peace and power and health, do not try to 
force these any more than you would try 
to force darkness out of a room. Calmly 
hold before your mind seven times a day 
this perfect ideal as yours by right and 
choice, and that must be yours by realiza- 
tion if you earnestly desire, fully believe, 
and firmly will it so to be; and just as 
sunlight presses upon the world to replace 
the darkness with light, so does the 
Infinite press upon you from every side, 
through every avenue to banish pain and 
disease and gloom and fear and worry, 
by filling you with ease and peace and joy 
and hope and cheerfulness. Just " clear 
the darkened windows" — darkened by 
fear and doubt and error — "and let the 
blessed sunlight in." The truth is, most 
people who fail to enter into a realization 
of oneness with the Infinite do so because 
they have been too busy looking for some 
imaginary line to cross that divides the 
human from the divine. There is no line 
in fact. Let a man calmly accept the fact, 
claim the fact, declare it, and he will in- 
evitably pass out of human-consciousness 
into God-consciousness. 



CHAPTER IV. 

"the pkonoun of power. " 

THIS is the age of Egoism gone to seed ; 
the assertion of the ego as the most 
important thing in the world; the adjust- 
ment of all facts to the self ; the converg- 
ing of all the lines of perspective to find 
a common point in the self. Just what 
this self is has not been determined. It 
refuses to go under the microscope, or sub- 
mit to chemical analysis or mental solu- 
tion. But it does submit to be talked about, 
and so pleasant is that experience, that it 
proceeds to talk about itself. It is ludi- 
crous to hear a neurasthenic dwell upon 
his woes and ills and troubles, real or im- 
aginary — mostly the latter. One might 
smile were not the havoc wrought so pa- 
thetic. But egotism, this thing of dwelling 
so much on oneself, is a common fault with 
a multitude who are not classed as "nerv- 
ous. ' ' Nothing bores any of us so much as 
to have someone insist on talking about 
himself, when we want to talk about our- 
selves. And egotism reaches the limit of 
sufferance when it takes on an air of mock 
humility and the language of pious cant, 



32 The Voice Eternal 

and talks in public and private of "poor 
unworthy me/' and "I'm a poor, weak 
worm of the dust." They tell the truth, 
and as long as they think and talk that 
way, they will stay that way. 

Now egoism may also pave the way to 
your real part and place in the world. 
Lift up your head, put out your chest, 
walk a little heavier on your heels, accept 
your nature, character, and destiny as 
divine. Let your egoism find vent in union 
with the Infinite Ego. Take your place in 
the world as a son of God. As one in whose 
flesh and life God walks among men. Does 
it seem a far cry from what you actually 
realize and manifest of this incarnate life, 
to what the ideal is? To what you may 
be? It is only a seeming. The distance 
is a creation of your own thought. The 
earthliness of your humanity makes such 
a racket, that you cannot hear the voice, 
nor realize the nearness and reality of 
your divinity. 

It took the impetuous, fiery Moses, forty 
years at the onerous and lonesome task of 
herding sheep, before he could get himself 
still enough to hear the voice of the "I 
am that I am" within him. While egoism 



"The Pronoun of Power" 33 

— the "I am" of Moses — is the limit of his 
progress in consciousness, he is still, and 
only, the "Son of Pharoah's daughter." 
But when, after long years in the 
solitudes, his self-consciousness became 
merged into the consciousness of God, and 
he could hear the voice within him saying, 
"I am that I am," he ceased to be called 
the Son of Pharoah's daughter, for he had 
become the mouthpiece, the incarnated 
presence and power of Jehovah's personal- 
ity, ready and comissioned to deliver Is- 
rael. From that hour, in every time of 
perplexity, he had only to call upon this 
Infinite life within himself, to realize that 
Infinite resources were at hand to divide 
a sea, to feed a multitude, or to shake a 
kingdom. 

The only safety valve for this exagger- 
ated self-consciousness which today pos- 
sesses the world of rational men, is 
to merge it into God-consciousness ; to let 
the egoism — the "I am" — be lost in the 
Infinite Ego — the ' ' I am that I am. ' ' And 
why should you wait forty years for the 
fiery passions of life to die out, or even 
for forty days, to realize the "I am that 
I am" within you? You need not seek 



34 The Voice Eternal 

the silence of the desert, nor the seclusion 
of the cloister. Follow the directions of 
the Master who taught us the secret of 
oneness with the Father. "Enter into thy 
closet, and when thou hast shut thy door." 
You will not hear this great voice of the 
spirit speak at first save in the solitude. 
You must find time daily alone. Into this 
aloneness you may not take your dearest 
earthly friend. After a while you will 
learn to hear the voice within in the midst 
of any tumult ; but at first you must enter 
in and shut the door. Wherever you are, 
as you read this line, enter now this great 
within, close up the eyes, ears, and all the 
doors of sense. You can do it. Have you 
not had your attention so engrossed on 
some magnificent scene, or some work of 
art, that you did not hear your friend 
at your elbow speak; or have you not 
been listening to something or "thinking" 
and passed your friend on the street, look- 
ing straight at him with no sign of recog- 
nition, and "come to" with a start after 
you had passed? So abstract jouv mind 
away from the things of time and sense, 
enter into this dumb house, insulated, and 
isolated, and be still! Contemplate your 



"The Pronoun of Power" 35 

divine birthright, to realize and manifest 
the fulness of the Infinite life. Pass up 
the path trod by prophets and seers in 
every age, "take off thy shoes from thy 
feet," let your approach be so reverent 
and trustful, that it needs give no warning 
of approach. Walk up and stand before 
God. Bathe your spirit in His Infinite 
life and peace and love and health. See in 
him as in a mirror your own true self. 
Settle here for yourself that old conflict 
that nearly rent the early christian church 
— namely, is this living God, before whom 
you stand, the same substance of which 
you are made, or just like it, but not the 
same? In Greek there is but an "iota's" 
difference in expressing it, but to you it 
means the difference of being a son or an 
alien. Tarry here until the "I am" is lost 
in the greater "I am that I am." Then 
with your oneness assured, return to your 
earthly walk, in full possession of all the 
resources for health and wealth, for power 
and service, for "thy Father which seeth 
in secret shall reward thee openly." 
Henceforth the works that you do are not 
yours, but "thy Father's." These vast 
resources are not yours, nor for your sake, 



36 The Voice Eternal 

but they are rather given for the perfect 
manifestation of the Infinite life for your 
own and for others' welfare. This is the 
first degree of the Abundant Life, and its 
password is, "I am that I am." 

It was said of Jesus that "he spake as 
one having authority." He didn't argue, 
nor try to prove anything. No intellec- 
tual heat is apparent in the tremendous 
truths he uttered. He didn't seem to dis- 
cover any new truth by logical process, 
but he did speak what he himself was, 
and having announced the truth, he let 
men do what they would with it. The po- 
tency of his words lay in the fact that they 
were not his, but the God's who sent him. 
They w T ere not what he thought, but what 
he was. And with the consciousness of his 
oneness with God, there came the sense of 
authority to speak, and "it was done"; 
to command, and "it stood fast." Deaf 
ears heard at his touch, blind eyes opened 
at his word, the lame man leaped as an 
hart, and the tongue of the dumb spake. 
Even the elements obeyed his command. 
With that consciousness of oneness there 
was never a moment's hesitation. "Take 
up thy bed and walk" — "I will, be thou 



"The Pronoun of Power" 37 

clean. " The omnipotent "I can/' had its 
seat of authority in him, because God 
dwelt in him, and he knew and asserted 
it with all that it meant. Just when this 
oneness became a fact is not so important 
as when he became conscious of the fact. 
And that is the supreme moment to us all. 
Sooner or later the time comes when we 
accept and enter into our divine heritage, 
and we see something of what lies before 
us. There is the break with bigotry and 
narrowness ; the going forth to a world of 
divine men, most of whom do not know it, 
and will not receive it, and like swine, on 
whose level they live, will turn and rend 
you when you have cast this pearl of truth 
before them. Facing such a career, more 
than one man has said, "Mine hour is not 
yet come." Yet the hour arrives when 
perplexed men appeal to you, when the 
hungry must be fed, the thirsty given 
drink, the needy helped, the diseased and 
pain-ridden and obsessed must be set free, 
and you will face the great question — 
"Can I manifest the divine 'I am' in this 
case?" Your hour is come, and the "I 
am that I am" of Infinite potentiality be- 
comes the "I can" of achievement. At 



38 The Voice Eternal 

your touch pain will depart, at your word 
of comfort sorrow will flee away; your 
hand shall wipe away the tears, and at 
your word of command the devils of psy- 
chic obsession will make haste to depart ; 
and you w r ill so manifest the power of <3rod 
that you will realize that you have passed 
into the second degree of the Life More 
Abundant, whose password is "/ can." 

Pause here for a moment. Enter the 
chamber of reflection. Ponder the mean- 
ing of the resources that are yours. Im- 
agination cannot sound the height and 
depth of the "I am that I am" and "I 
can" to which you have attained. And 
here a voice will speak to you and say: 
"If this be true, if you be the Son of 
God, if you have a divine gift, if the ful- 
ness of divine life dwells in you, you can 
command that these stones be made bread. 
Sell out this gift for bread. Business is 
business, and you can make money out 
of this power." Will you sell out, or will 
you answer : "I cannot live by bread alone. 
There are other things as important and 
these I should lose if I sold out for bread." 
Before you answer, recall that "all things 
are yours, and you are Christ's and Christ 



"The Pronoun of Power" 39 

is God's." Then why should you barter 
this divine gift for something that is po- 
tentially yours already, but the complete 
and full possession of which might prove 
a handicap to higher service. 

Again will a voice say to you: "If di- 
vine power is in you, if you have a gift of 
God, make a display of it. Set the multi- 
tudes agape with the wonders you can 
show them, make a show of yourself — it 
doesn't matter what you do, you cannot 
fail." Be careful here. Remember that 
one who "did not many mighty works" in 
a certain place, "because of their unbe- 
lief. ' ' All results are conditioned on some- 
thing. Even God might fail if he violated 
the conditions of the operation of his own 
laws. Spectacular as were some of the 
works of Jesus, the demand for him to do 
them for "show" was ever met with the 
answer: "There shall no sign be given." 

And the tempter will say once more: 
"Granted that you are a Son of God, that 
you and God are one, that the Infinite 'I 
am' dwells in you — is you — call it by some 
other name, fall down and worship the 
traditions of the past, the accepted order 
of things. Why should you choose the 



40 The Voice Eternal 

cross of persecution that the pharisees of 
sectarianism will lay upon you ? Why 
court the derision of the doctors of medi- 
cine, by presuming to live in health, or 
even to die without their assistance? 
Choose an easier way, 5 ' Here then is your 
final test. Will you claim your birthright 
and call it by its right name, and in that 
name go forth to manifest its power ? Look 
at your motive. Do you desire perfect 
health, that you may fully manifest the 
Infinite health, and that you may serve in 
full vigor, ministering health to others? 
Do you desire the Peace of God, so that 
dwelling in perfect peace you may speak 
the word of peace to the troubled ones of 
earth? Do you desire wealth that you 
may have leisure to serve and means to 
lighten the load of the heavy-laden ? Do 
these motives seem to you worthy of one 
who can say, "I am that I am?' 7 If so, 
then speak that word that spoke worlds 
into existence, bringing order out of 
chaos, and man out of dust — the word 
upon which pivots your whole future des- 
tiny — "I will" — and enter the third de- 
gree of the most Abundant Life, of which 
"I will" is the password. 



"The Pronoun -of Power" 41 

Let these words, "I am," "I can,"- "I 
will," be the one triune potentiality be- 
fore which you bow and say: " Whose I 
am, and whom I serve." For these are 
the words that marshal all the God-like 
powers, and cause them to move out with 
resistless force to assault the gates of 
pain, poverty, fear, disease, and death, and 
to end them with the challenge : "Oh pain, 
sin, death, where is thy sting or thy vic- 



7% 



*;J 



tory 

Avoid two mistakes, one of which is to 
wait until you realize the fulness of the 
divine power before claiming it and be- 
ginning to manifest it. Rather respond to 
the first call that will surely head your 
way. Speak to it in the name of the "I 
am that I am," and you will marvel at 
the result; and each successive use will 
enlarge your manifesting power. The oth- 
er is, beware of thinking that you can 
keep unused this Infinite life. Remem- 
ber that the Dead Sea is dead because it 
gathers but never gives, except by evapo- 
ration. You are not an evaporator, you 
are a channel. As you freely pour out 
of this life, the flood tides of Infinite Life 
will pour in, "pressed down, shaken to- 



42 The Voice Eternal 

gether, running over." In a city of the 
northwest, there may be seen at the dis- 
tance of forty miles a snow-crowned peak 
lifting its head far above all about it, and 
at its foot a beautiful lake of ice-cold 
water, clear as crystal. On a street of this 
city, you will find an immense watering 
trough, where a constant procession of 
thirsty teams are stopping to drink deeply 
of its crystal liquid, yet never for a mo- 
ment is the supply depleted. When the 
trough is just so full, the supply automat- 
ically shuts off ; and when it drops below 
its normal level, it automatically opens 
and that exhaustless reservoir far away 
pours in its fresh, sweet supply. And this 
is the parable of the Abundant Life, 
whose flood gates are opened by the pro- 
noun of power, I, so that the speech is 
resonant with power, the eye glows with 
light, the finger-tips tingle with healing 
energy, the whole body vibrates with a re- 
sistless power for health; and the very 
shadow, like that of Peter of old, blesses 
those upon whom it unconsciously falls. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE MAX ON CRUTCHES. 

AT FIRST blush man is a materialist. 
He sees things as material objects ; he 
thinks in material forms, he speaks in 
material terms, and most of his life is lived 
out in a very material way. These ma- 
terial things are the crutches upon which 
his living spirit limps until it finds itself 
and learns to walk alone. The conscious- 
ness of material things is evident in all 
his thoughts and actions. He may assume 
some lofty philosophy and deny the real- 
ity of material things, but he still has a 
very material sort of hunger that must 
feed on material food, he writes material 
books on which he secures material copy- 
right and for which he insists on receiving 
some very material dollars. And when he 
comes into contact with the business end 
of a bee, he gives material evidence of 
feeling material pain. So does our mate- 
rialism ever play havoc with our philoso- 
phy. It is a part of man's inheritance 
from the various stages of his evolution. 
It is needless to debate whether his ma- 
terial form came from a monkey or a clod, 



44 The Voice Eternal 

the real question is how far has he gotten 
away from the monkey or the clod, on 
his journey up toward the angels and to- 
ward God. His materialism clings, and 
he can no more shake it off in a moment, 
than he can shake his shadow when the 
sun shines upon him. 

Not one in a thousand can think of God 
as the universal spiritual substance, with- 
out body or parts. We think of him as a 
man. The white man thinks of him as a 
big white man, the Chinaman as a big 
chinaman, the Indian as a big indian and 
the African as a big black man. Nor does 
it change the force of this observation 
that there is a seeming exception in the 
case of the American Negro, who through 
centuries of environment abandoned his 
own material notions and adopted that 
of his superiors, that God is a big white 
man, and finds delight in singing such 
songs as that one whose chorus runs, 
"Whiter than snow, Now wash me and I 
shall be whiter than snow." We project 
the material terms and forms of our ideas, 
and clothe God with them, thus creating 
God in our own image, and reversing the 
original order of our being made in his 
image. 



The Man on Crutches 45 

Now this big man of our mental con- 
ception we have clothed with such Infinite 
power, that we are awed at the thought 
of comparing ourselves with him. The an- 
cient psalmist, answering his own ques- 
tion, "What is man?" exclaimed, "Thou 
hast made him a little less than God," 
but the translators were afraid to give man 
his true dignity, so they made it read, "a 
little lower than the angels." And that 
action of the translators is in keeping with 
most of the acts in man's earthly career, 
for he was made with all created things 
under his feet, but he promptly reversed 
the order and put them all over his head, 
and he has been trying to climb out from 
under them ever since. 

In the record of those glimpses that 
men have been given of the Infinite Life, 
God is spoken of as man, speaks as a man, 
feels as a man, and so strong is this ma- 
terialistic notion of God that men of all 
ages have wanted to see God, and in lieu 
of that vision have worshipped the sun, 
moon, stars, the bull, the ram, natural 
forces, man's reproductive powers, in fact 
every form in which the divine creative 
energy has been manifest. These were 



46 The Voice Eternal 

substitutes for tlie reality. In the wilder- 
ness journey when Israel had lost sight of 
Moses in the mount, they said to Aaron, 
"Up and make us Gods that shall go be- 
fore us, for, as for this Moses we know 
not what is become of him." They wanted 
Gods that they could see. A brazen calf 
in sight was better than a wonder-working 
man out of sight. This is ever the human 
heart's cry — to see God. The Infinite, try- 
ing to find itself in material expression, 
and which has created the demand sets 
about to answer it, for He has appeared 
in dreams and visions, by Urim and 
Thummin, by prophets and seers, by sub- 
jective voice and by objective providence, 
coming always a little nearer the answer, 
until he came in that one perfect manifes- 
tation of the divine life, Jesus of Naza- 
reth, who said truly, "He that hath seen 
me hath seen the Father also." And even 
his most spiritual disciples exulted in the 
fact that they had seen and looked upon, 
touched and handled the word of life. 
Here ends then the long quest of man, the 
materialist. His crutches may be laid 
aside. God is no longer in some far off 
heaven, but in earth; no longer round 



The Man on Crutches 47 

about us, but in us, of us — us. And just 
as truly as in the miracle of the loaves and 
fishes, none could tell where the natural 
bread and fish ended and the supernatural 
bread and fish began for the simple reason 
that there was no difference, they being 
of one substance, so no man can tell just 
where the purely human life in man ends 
and the Infinite Life begins, for the rea- 
son that there is no difference, they are 
one. And this identification is indicated 
in the saying of Jesus that when we minis- 
ter unto the least of these we minister unto 
him, and in that question to Saul of Tar- 
sus "why persecutest thou me," when he 
was actually persecuting some of the hum- 
ble followers of the Christ. Yet after all 
these object lessons we are only slowly ac- 
cepting the fact that God does indeed dwell 
in flesh upon the earth, and when it comes 
to some of the inevitable results of that 
truth, our materialism still asserts itself. 
We are still on crutches. For like Moses 
who was slow of speech and had to call in 
Aaron to be a mouthpiece, a crutch to 
lean upon, we have developed a whole sys- 
tem of crutches through whose mediation 
the divine life is ministered, for be it kept 



The Voice Eternal 



in mind that the Infinite Life accommo- 
dates itself to our stage of development, 
as he did with Moses and his people of 
that day. They said, ' ' speak thou to God 
for us, and let him speak to thee, and thou 
to us, but let not God speak to us lest we 
die." Five-sixths of the race must still 
have a minister of religion, a priest, to 
speak to God in their behalf, and speak 
to them in God's behalf. So mote it be. 
Let not the other sixth feel called upon to 
knock away the crutch of the masses and 
drop them into the mire, simply because 
the one-sixth can walk alone — can walk 
and talk with God. 

Our stammering tongues cannot express 
what we think and feel in our worship 
and praise, so we call in to our aid the rich 
and beautiful liturgies of the devout of 
all the ages, to help us to present, in fitting 
form, our feelings and thoughts toward 
this formless spirit which takes form in 
man. 

Or, we feel the need of some symbol of 
the Infinite Life incarnate in flesh, an 
object lesson to teach us not only the fact 
of the Divine presence in human life in 
all its manifestations, but also the method 



The Man on Crutches 49 

by which the Infinite life is imparted to 
us. And we turn to that supreme Chris- 
tian symbol, the Holy Eucharist in which 
the Infinite is represented as forever 
being offered for us, and we have in a ma- 
terial form an interpretation of the con- 
stant impartation of the Infinite life. And 
if we shall be led into thinking that we 
receive the Divine life only in the moment 
we receive the material elements our mis- 
take will be as great as when we are lead 
into thinking that the elements have been 
actually transformed into the physical 
reality of the Saviour's body. In the one 
case we have robbed ourselves of the su- 
preme joy of living out our lives every 
moment in the life of God, and in the other 
we have chosen to mistake the crutch for 
the living thing it symbolizes. 

Or as we have seen some wild bird in the 
depths of the forest find a pool in which it 
fluttered and cleansed the soot from its 
wings, so we have seen the need of some 
material aid to assist us in cleansing the 
soul of its earthliness, the residuum of past 
actions and passions that have had their 
place in our lives, and we turn again to 
that other Christian symbol of baptism, 



50 The Voice Eternal 

and we have an illustration of how the soul 
is purified by the incoming tides of the 
divine life, and restored to its pristine 
beauty. 

Or like St. Paul we may have seen the 
third heaven of emotional rapture and 
heard things unlawful to utter, and, been 
filled with such healing power, as that 
handkerchiefs and aprons touching our 
bodies, are carried to the sick and they 
recover, yet be compelled to confess to a 
" thorn in the flesh." which no amount of 
prayer has removed, and to rejoice in 
Luke, "the beloved physician" as a 
travelling companion. 

Many of our ills disappear at the word 
of authority of the life within us, but 
some may not. Then we turn to the phy- 
sician for a crutch to lean upon. And why 
should we blush or apologize for it. Is 
not the Infinite life constantly ministered 
to us in food, and drink, and air? Do I 
dishonor the Infinite life within me, by 
eating bread when I am hungry, drinking 
water when I am thirsty, or breathing 
deeply to oxygenate the blood, and by 
these and other means renew my flagging 
energies? And if not, do I deny the 



The Man on Crutches 51 

Infinite life when I take quinine to eradi- 
cate the vandal germ of malaria from my 
blood instead of giving him large doses of 
mental suggestion. Or when a savage 
hook worm gets a strangle hold on the 
neck of my stomach, do I dishonor my in- 
dwelling life of power, if instead of argu- 
ing with him about his being an "error of 
thought" I pass him a little thymol that 
will speedily make a "good indian" of 
him. Is the energy in a bean or a grain 
of wheat, any more divine than the energy 
in the bark of the cinchona tree? Come 
now brethren, let us reason together. 

When we over-eat and miss-eat, and 
most of us do this, do we quit eating per- 
manently, or do we reform our diet and 
habits? Then when we have over-doc- 
tored and mis-doctored shall we abstain 
or reform. We may conceive of a time 
when men will learn to live without eat- 
ing, but the time is not yet. And we may 
conceive a time when men shall live the 
perfect life of God on earth, and will not 
need medicine. Some have already learned 
it. But it is a long process to bring a 
world of individuals, such as those in our 
world, to such a state of perfectly mani- 



52 The Voice Eternal 

festing the divine life that "none of the 
inhabitants shall say I am sick." Until 
that time happily for us there is planted 
in the city of each man's soul "a tree of 
life, whose leaves are for the healing of 
the nations/' and corresponding to it in 
this material world is a materia medica 
with proven potencies. 

One may gaze in rapt contemplation on 
his spiritual tree of Infinite life and 
energy, and by a sort of auto-suggestion 
appropriate its healing potency, and live 
in health. Another may be still on crutches 
and compelled to turn to the material tree 
or herb, and take some of its leaves and 
make a powder to swallow, and by its 
energy find the way to health. Brother 
idealist, do not throw stones at him for it. 
Presumably he is doing the best he knows ; 
at least it is what most people do and will 
continue to do for a long time to come. 
The race can't get off its crutches in a day. 
Jesus did not heal all the sick people in 
the world when he was here. But the com- 
pany is increasing of those who have 
progressed in the divine life far enough 
to manifest it in perfect health without the 



The Man on Crutches 53 

use of material form, and they are the 
prophecy of a future time, 

' ' When the lame leap for joy and the blind re- 
ceive their sight; 

When ears long closed to sound, will be ravished 
with delight. 

And tongues that never uttered a sentence here 
below, 

Burst into song through ages long, thither let us 
go." 

A MAN CAN BE ANYTHING HE 
WANTS TO BE ; ANYTHING HE BE- 
LIEVES HE CAN BE; ANYTHING 
HE WILLS TO BE. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE 

THE traveler making the ascent of Mt. 
Hood has the choice of two routes — 
the shorter and more precipitous one 
from the north, or the longer and 
more gradual one from the south. 
In one case the movement is in an 
opposite direction from what it would 
be in the other, but they both reach 
the same goal. And he who would find 
the summit of self-mastery where abide 
peace, health, power, plenty, and the 
reality of the glorious vision of a perfect 
or whole life, will find two seemingly oppo- 
site movements operating, yet each leading 
to the coveted goal. 

There is the positive aggressive asser- 
tion of the Ego, which says, "I am, I can, 
and / will, be the master of all things in 
my life. ' ' Following this motion the indi- 
vidual moves steadily forward to condition 
all the circumstances of his life. He says 
to Poverty, "Thou hast no place in my 
]ife. All the potencies of Infinite plenty 
dwell here. I am not running in feverish 
haste after a fleeing prosperity. I am 



Path of Least Resistance 55 

swinging wide the door of my life, and 
opening every avenue of action for 
plenty to come in. Infinite plenty is 
seeking me, wants to make me its 
instrument of expression, and its agent for 
others. I am content to be its incarnation 
in any degree. I do not fear poverty, nor 
do I fear that plenty will flee from me. It 
will come to me just as fast as I can give 
it adequate and divine expression. I have 
conquered poverty for I am plenty and 
prosperit}^. I hold before me the vision 
of myself as surrounded with all the set- 
tings of plenty and comfort and useful- 
ness." 

He says to Fear and Worry, ' i Thou hast 
no place in my life. There is no room here 
for your brood, for the Infinite life whose 
perfect expression is love, fills me to the 
exclusion of all else. I am made perfect 
and complete in this love that casts out 
fear and leaves no room for it. Why should 
I fear a shadow that is cast by no sub- 
stance in me, that has no reality in the 
presence of Infinite love ? Why should I 
dishonor this Infinite love by fearing that 
it cannot keep me in all my ways ? Why 
should I worry over something that seems 



56 The Voice Eternal 

to threaten evil to rne when I have the 
assurance of this Infinite love that 'no 
evil shall befall me'? And even when evil 
days come and life is sorely beset, this 
Infinite love assures me that 'All things 
work together for good' for me. This afflic- 
tion shall work out for me a greater weight 
of joy. I shall find it but the advance 
agent of some greater blessing for w T hich it 
is preparing the way, and that could not 
have come but for this steam roller which 
pulverizes the clods and prepares the way 
of the Lord. So I will not fear evil, nor 
worry over its possible coming, and if it 
comes, I shall say, 'Thank you. What 
message, what good are you leading my 
way'? And thus I shall overcome evil 
with good." 

He says to Pain and Disease, "Thine 
hour is come. Thou shalt no longer have 
dominion over me ; no longer usurp a place 
in this divine life of mine ; no longer obsess 
me with sensory images of pain and weak- 
ness and despondency. Thou shalt go out 
into the deep with thy fathers of old, and 
give room to the mighty tides of Infinite 
health now surging within me. Henceforth 
I shall know thee no more save as the 



Path of Least Resistance 57 

shadow of a passing wrong condition. 
Thou hast no substance, no meaning, save 
to announce the passing of my life up 
into larger expression and ease and use- 
fulness. Thou art at best but a ' growing 
pain' which I shall cast off as a troubled 
dream of the night. For I am health, 
ease, and power. My vision of myself is 
not of pain and disease, but virile 
strength and health. I behold myself 
dwelling in the life of God, filled and 
clothed upon with the expression of per- 
fect health." 

And thus in this direct, positive way, 
he challenges the right of every obstacle 
that would hinder perfect expression of 
the divine life, and by the irresistible im- 
pact of this sheer force of will, sweeps 
them out of the way. This may seem to 
picture life as a very strenuous affair. 
And life that is worth anything is strenu- 
ous. The Master in calling men to follow 
him, did not hide from them the difficul- 
ties they must meet. And his greatest 
Apostle chose the figures of the foot-race 
and the battle — the two most strenuous 
exercises of that age — to set forth the 
real nature of living. The principle of 



58 The Voice Eternal 

the " survival of tlie fittest" is still in 
operation. And there are many who by 
temperament and character are so 
equipped as to need only to go forth in 
this militant, direct way to resist the devil 
in all the forms in which evil meets them, 
and find that he flees from them, and his 
obsessions disappear. 

Even these strong natures find occa- 
sional Alps too high for them to scale, and 
while they can dispose of nineteen visita- 
tions of adversity, fear, or disease, the 
twentieth one will stick and refuse to 
budge. It will neither go nor be forgot- 
ten. Two things are possible to be done. 
One is the augmenting of our own inade- 
quate forces — inadequate by lack of faith 
— by annexing those of a friend, and so 
fulfill the conditions of a marvelousi 
increase of power, viz., "If two of you 
shall agree as touching anything, it shall 
be done" — not may be, or can be, but shall 
be done. Here two wills agree and be- 
cause of that agreement, there is given 
unlimited power. 

Suppose that this other person, healer, 
or friend, be not available, there remains 
then the other general law of procedure — 



Path of Least Resistance 59 

that of indirection. And many will find 
this at first to be the most and only suc- 
cessful way they can proceed. Disease, 
pain, fear, or worry, or some other idea 
which may or may not be materialized, gets 
hold of the mind and so obsesses it that 
the mind cannot shake it off. Each effort 
only finds it, like the old man of the sea 
on Sinbad the Sailor's neck, seated the 
more firmly in its place. Turn now to the 
method of indirection. Choose some other 
idea and place it beside the obsessing one. 
It may be difficult at first to hold the mind 
on this new and rival thought, but by a 
little persistence it will become stronger 
as the attention to it waxes, and this other 
will become dim as the attention to it 
wanes, until often in an incredibly short 
time the new thought has entirely dis- 
placed the undesirable one. The process 
resolves itself into the will power to direct 
the attention to any idea for the eventual 
exclusion of the other ideas that assume 
undue prominence in the mind. 

It is often done half unconsciously, as 
when one, tired or weak from recent sick- 
ness, repairs to the seaside and sits and 
gazes upon the ocean's heaving expanse, 



60 The Voice Eternal 

tossing its fathomless depths up toward 
the sky, and he trembles to think of get- 
ting within the range of its power, And 
while he meditates, the ocean becomes 
vocal through his unconscious self, and 
begins to sing its song of pow T er — "In me 
are gathered the immensity of mighty 
forces. The wildest storms of earth have 
fallen to sleep on my bosom. The raging 
torrents of earth's rivers have gathered 
into my depths. The roar of the tempest, 
the flash of lightning, the roll of thunder, 
have been but the time beat of an earthly 
song that I have heard from creation's 
hour. Yet if thou will know my law, and 
boldly commit thyself to my bosom, I 
become a highway of pleasure to bring 
together the ends of the earth and carry 
blessings to the farthest habitation of 
man. ' ' And as the days pass, the uncon- 
scious absorption of strength and power 
from this embodiment of power goes on 
until one day the patient rejoices in the 
return to health and strength. 

Or, such an one goes to the mountains 
and forests and sees countless tons of vege- 
tation pushing upward in the face of the 
laws of gravity, yet not a sigh or groan. 



Path of Least Resistance 61 

And soon he feels the living force of that 
unseen power of which these are the 
images, raising him up in spite of the 
drag of weakness and pain. 

Or, he beholds some wild flower bloom- 
ing in some secluded spot where no eye 
shall see it, yet it gaily tosses its head to 
the breeze, nor worries as to whether it 
shall rain or shine, whether frost shall 
come in untimely hour and spoil its beauty, 
or whether any eye shall see its beauty, or 
any nostrils delight in its fragrance. And 
as you consider this flower of the forest, 
how it grows without worry or care, but 
simply keeping still in the conditions of 
its life, and finding itself clothed with 
glory that Solomon could not even have 
dreamed of, the sense of resignation 
and rest in the place where we are, takes 
hold of us, and joy and gladness is ours; 
and we have by keeping still in the pres- 
ence of infinite strength, found our 
strength renewed. 

There remains the secret path of non- 
resistance. It is sometimes better to bend 
than to break, better to walk round the 
mountain than to scale its heights. A 
stream starting down the mountain side 



62 The Voice Eternal 

and finding a rock in the way, doesn't try 
to batter its way through the rock, but 
finds the way of least resistance, and so 
makes a channel along which it can move, 
and gradually wear away that "very rock. 
And many a life is trying to batter down 
temperamental barriers, or hammer its 
way through the rock of some hereditary 
limitations instead of finding the way of 
least resistance. Here's a man trying to 
sell goods when all the time there is no 
inner content. He ought to be hammering 
iron, or plowing in the field, or teaching 
men, or practicing law, or healing the 
sick, or singing some sweet song of 
comfort, or preaching some gospel of 
peace. There is always the intuitive sense 
that he is doing the wrong thing, an inner 
longing to do something else. And this 
unsatisfaction is the voice of his divine 
life prophesying to him what he may be or 
ought to be, but he is started in the wrong 
vocation and he 's afraid to experiment by 
changing, so he batters away at the intan- 
gible yet ever-present obstacle of discon- 
tent and drags out life in dissatisfaction. 
Or on the other hand, one day he chooses 
the way of least resistance, no matter if 



Path of Least Resistance 63 

it seems a step upward or downward, and 
lo ! there is peace, and the sense that he is 
moving in the way that furnishes the In- 
finite life the largest, openest channel to 
most perfectly express itself. 

These misadjustments of life furnish 
most of its tragedies. Many a man is a 
butcher or baker simply because his father 
was one, or it was the way chosen for 
him by his friends, and for every other 
reason than that of adaptability. The city 
Miss goes to the town or village to teach 
school, wiiere she dilates on the pleasures 
of city life, enlarges upon its opportuni- 
ties, until the country is depopulated by 
the rush of youth to the city when they 
are needed in the country, and most of 
them are best fitted for its life and activi- 
ties. 

Neither the opinions of our friends, the 
desire of our parents, nor our own judg- 
ment is the infallible guide in choosing 
our life 's work ; but that inner voice which 
clamors for action in its own chosen way, 
holds before us what we ought to be, plays 
an anvil chorus on the front door of the 
soul, lays for us around the corner with a 
stuffed club, making such a din that we 



64 The Voice Eternal 

cannot do our task in comfort. This voice 
is the prophet of the soul, voicing the will 
of the Infinite life which would find fullest 
expression in us, leading us into a state 
without inner friction, and keeping us in 
the experience of perfect peace. It seems 
to stand at the opening of our real place 
of service and say — "This is the way, walk 
ye in it. ' ' 

Human history is full of the records of 
those who have patiently borne the ills of 
life, believing that the way would emerge 
into view, and they have eventually come 
forth to be the world's leaders, and have 
looked back on those da}^s in the school 
of adversity from which they graduated 
with full honors, as a thing to be proud of, 
because it lead them to the full realization 
of the divine life. Either of these ways — 
direct or indirect or the way of least 
resistance — may become highways of life 
along whose royal path the soul may mount 
up to its own. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE PARABLE OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE. 

PERSONAL traits of character and 
variations in temperament have to 
be reckoned with, for they help or 
hinder the realization of this divine 
life within us. Our early training 
and environment are large factors to 
be dealt with in solving the prob- 
lem of perfectly manifesting the divine 
life. Heredity pours in a stream of influ- 
ences that sometimes threatens to engulf 
us and blot out the consciousness of our 
divine nature, dignity, and destiny. In 
the face of these and possibly other 
impediments, stands the Infinite life with- 
in and about us, ready to work with or in 
spite of them, as the case may require, 
waiting onty on the action of our own 
choice — just as in a well- wired house every 
room is reached by a live wire waiting 
only the pressing of a button to rush in 
and flood the darkest room with light, 
warmth, and cheer. That factor of human 
personality called the will controls the 
flood-gates of the Infinite life w T hich will 
pour in, re-creating environments, over- 



66 The Voice Eternal 

hauling temperaments, and transforming 
the evil tendencies of heredity into engines 
of good. A man can be anything he wants 
to be and do anything he wants to do if 
he goes at it intelligently and with deter- 
mination. Nothing is out of his reach. 
Believing in this unlimited life that dwells 
in him, and in his right and power to call 
upon it, all things are possible. He laughs 
at impossibilities and cries "It shall be 
done." Whether one travels by the old 
beaten paths of evangelical trust, or by the 
new road of philosophical idealism, the 
means and the end are alike and the result 
is assured. The full persuasion of the fact 
of the atonement with God, and the accept- 
ance as a verity of the inherent powers of 
the Soul to partake and manifest the 
divine nature, are the conditions of 
realization. 

We are often met by the circumstances 
that one person comes into this realiza- 
tion with seemingly little or no effort of 
faith or will, w r hile another attains to it 
only after long and painful effort. It 
may be explained by the influences of 
heredity as giving us varying physical 
constitution and mental temperament, but 



Parable of the Christmas Tree 67 

a more familiar and satisfactory answer 
to many will be found in two scriptural 
quotations and a modern parable. In I. 
Corinthians, 12th Chapter, there is an 
enumeration of the gifts of the Spirit, 
while in Galatians, 5th Chapter, there is 
a list of the fruits of the Spirit. Now it 
so happens that faith, the power to be- 
lieve things seen or unseen, is both a gift 
and a fruit, the difference between them 
being like the difference between a Christ- 
mas tree and a fruit tree. In the one case 
the products on the tree are the result of 
action outside of the tree and its processes 
of growth; in the other, the fruits are 
produced by an inward process of the 
forces of the tree-life itself. Faith as a 
fruit is the result of right thinking, care- 
ful training, and correct observation of 
the experience of ourselves and others. 
Faith is confidence founded on knowledge 
of its object. Its three great fields of 
action in our material life are in the 
operation of the laws of Nature, and of 
cause and effect, and in our fellow-man. 
Just as our faith in the laws of Nature, 
or those of cause and effect, is based upon 
their known and uniform action, so is our 



68 The Voice Eternal 

faith in our fellow determined by 
our knowledge of his character and re- 
sources. We may have no confidence in 
a total stranger, hut if he hears a certifi- 
cate of worth from our intimate friend 
who knows him, that changes it and we 
trust it and we trust him because of our 
friend's knowledge of him. Likewise our 
faith in God is confidence based on our 
knowledge of his character and resources 
as they are manifested to or in us, or our 
friends. And this fruit of faith, the result 
of a process going on within us, is an 
ever increasing quality. The prophecy of 
the Infinite life is "It shall come to pass." 
The history of human experience is "It 
came to pass." Upon these two facts 
faith moves forward to full fruition. It 
remains true that in one person the fruits 
of faith are of easy inception and rapid 
of growth, while in another the process is 
painful and slow. "The Jew requires a 
sign" — to cast a rod on the floor and let 
it become a serpent was enough for him. 
"The Greek seeks after wisdom." He 
had to be "shown," to have it all reasoned 
out. With this hint as to the nature of 
faith and its growth, it ought also to be 



Parable of the Christmas Tree 69 

said that one may tamper with the facts 
in evidence and the laws of belief, until 
he finds himself unable to believe any- 
thing, and his is henceforth a barren life. 
Turn we now to faith as a gift and we 
find men believing in things for which 
there is no adequate reason, and thus be- 
lieving, they endure and triumph and 
attain as seeing the invisible, and sooner 
or later realize it in visible form. A man 
stands in the presence of an impossible 
task and with no earthly knowledge of 
ways or means, calmly affirms, "It shall 
be done," and it is. We meet men who 
are utter strangers and yet by some intui- 
tive sense we perceive their worth and 
trust them to the uttermost — a faith that 
has no material or objective warrant. And 
without conscious preparation or known 
process, a soul seems to step into absolute 
confidence in the Infinite God, and appro- 
priate to itself his unlimited pow r er for its 
needs. It has no struggle to realize the 
truth. It believes, and acts upon that 
belief, and the thing is done. Thus it hap- 
pens that one person without seeming 
effort, grasps the peace, the plenty, the 
health, the power of the Infinite life, while 



70 The Voice Eternal 

another halts and hesitates and stumbles 
over the truth, and even when he sees it, 
finds it difficult of realization. Let him 
not falter nor covet a gift which he may 
not have, for there is a more excellent way 
— the faith that worketh by love ; for while 
gifts of all sorts may fail, the fruit of 
patient persistence in well-doing, promp- 
ted by love, can never fail. Love 
sends us forth to some kindly ministry 
to some one more unfortunate than we are, 
and in the presence of his greater afflic- 
tion, our own seems as nothing; and cen- 
tering our attention on helping him, our 
own troubles are for the time forgotten. 
And if we could keep busy long enough so 
that our attention is permanently turned 
to other things, most of our ills would die 
of simple neglect. The vast majority of 
nervous people are so busy thinking and 
talking about themselves, that the first step 
in their relief is to set them thinking 
about, talking of, and working for, some- 
thing or somebody else. Altruism acts as 
the witty Frenchman said of medicine: 
"It entertains the patient while nature 
cures him." And altruism is born of love 
whose very language is giving. God loved 



Parable of the Christmas Tree 71 

and gave, we love and give, and are doubly 
blest in doing so, bringing benefit to oth- 
ers, and health to ourselves. 

All mental and spiritual results, and 
indirectly all physical benefits, are con- 
ditioned by the exercise of faith. " Ac- 
cording to your faith" is the divinely 
appointed measure of success. We pro- 
claim and really think that we have little 
faith, until some one comes to us with the 
note of attainment and certainty in his 
voice, the glow of health in his eyes and 
face, the air of conscious mastery in his 
whole bearing, and at his word or touch, 
our latent faith leaps into activity and we 
shed our ills as a certain tree sheds its dry 
leaves at the awakening thrill of the rising 
sap ; and the wonder of the cure and the 
fame of the healer go forth. Or we are 
far removed from these masters of the 
powers of life, and sigh that we may not 
behold them with our eyes, and we settle 
down to the humdrum of dead level exis- 
tence, until one day in our reading or 
meditations, there speaks within us the 
voice eternal saying — "All things are 
yours, and ye are Christ's and Christ is 
God's." "Ye are dead and your life is 



72 The Voice Eternal 

liid with Christ in 00(1/' and we begin to 
see how our own ego has been living 
a life separate and apart in our think- 
ing of it, from the eternal springs of exis- 
tence, and it is indeed a limited and mis- 
erable and dead affair ; and we behold our 
ego — our self, passing up into the divine 
ego — the Infinite self where our lives are 
merged into his, hid in him. Here we abide 
in the fulness of life, health, plenty. No 
plant that he hath not planted shall pros- 
per. We behold our ills, the untimely fruit 
of our erring, doubting, fearing mortal 
thinking, having no place nor part in the 
full life into which we have entered, drop 
from us, and we are clothed with those 
fruits of peace, joy, hope, and rightness, 
which issue only into health and whole- 
ness, the visible proofs that indeed we see 
God and live in him. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE LAST THING IN THE WORLD. 

HOPE that springs immortal in the hu- 
man breast has almost incalculable 
value as a prophylactic or preventive 
agency. It is one of the three cardinal 
Christian virtues that abide, and is set 
forth as being the last thing in the world, 
for the reason, doubtless, that when all 
else is gone there still is hope. As an 
anchor it holds the drifting soul because 

it lavs hold on the mysteries of God bevond 

*/ %/ *j 

the veil of seen things. And because that 
in evangelical teachings it is born of our 
trust in the reality of the visions of the 
eternal future, it is called "a living hope" 
into which we are begotten. Equally prom- 
inent is its place in those schemes of life 
set forth by philosophy and revealed by 
scientific research. 

Philosophy, delving into the economies 
of existence and formulating them into 
practical terms finds a place for hope as 
a bright particular star in the van of 
human progress. What tangled skeins has 
it not unwound % What disasters has it not 
illuminated % Through what wildernesses 



74 The Voice Eternal 

of ignorance, superstition, and failure has 
it not led? What depths has it not 
sounded % What heights has it not scaled % 

Likewise Science, focussing its inquir- 
ing gaze upon the processes and problems 
of world-making and world- destin}^ dis- 
covers grounds upon which to base a 
rational hope in "a far-off divine event, 
toward which the whole creation moves " 
— a fruition of the ages-long struggle of 
material existence, glorious beyond the 
power of words to describe or the mind of 
man to conceive. 

With unveiled vision Science beholds a 
vast evolutionary process stretching up 
from the first biological cell to the complex 
organism of man, by an almost infinite 
series of stages, each of which is the foun- 
dation of a further and upward movement 
until out of animalness man has come, an 
animal, and yet more — an intelligent, 
affectionate being. 

In this process Science discovers a 
dynamic agent working under conditions 
that involve relative failure, and apparent 
experiments, groping toward better types 
of life, as if some being were slowly yet 
surely perfecting the expression of his 



The Last Thing in the World 75 

being through progressive achievement, 
developing his skill by mastering the dif- 
ficulties attendant upon such growing 
material expression, and finding an ever 
larger self-realization in the progressive 
development of the life of the material 
universe. It beholds hardships, suffering, 
misery, struggle, and death in the world 
as incidental to the difficulties of his task, 
bound up with the adverse conditions 
which universally attend the raising of 
low, potential forms of energy up to ever 
higher forms. These evils in the problem 
of earthly existence may not be unmixed 
for they are necessary factors in all up- 
ward progress, and as they are left behind 
when their purpose is served, science pre- 
dicts, with the solution of the problem of 
existence, the elimination of every form of 
evil. Science beholds man as the crown 
of this evolutionary process, using this 
stage of development to project into still 
higher form the life within him. Prompted 
by some deep instinct, some deathless im- 
pulse, he reaches out in constant effort to 
join hands and co-operate with this 
dynamic agent in so conditioning and ex- 
pressing life as to lessen suffering, disease, 



76 The Voice Eternal 

and death, and finally to eliminate them, 
and to produce at last in this world a 
civilization in winch there is no moral nor 
disease death rate. It beholds man, physi- 
cal man, having his day — a day of brawn 
and animalism, until the intellect crowds 
to the front and the mental man has his 
day, of brilliance and enlargement ; which 
in turn is followed by a day of spiritual 
activity, of inspiration, and glory, w r hen 
patience and love and faith and kindness 
are revealed by the dynamic force finding 
perfect self-knowledge and expression in 
human flesh, and thus is God evolved in 
human form because God was involved in 
the antecedents of human existence. And 
man's hope is secure, for if "God only hath 
immortality/' man who partakes of the 
life of God from which he is inseparable, 
is also partaker of his immortality. 

Science enters more minutely into this 
process of evolution by inquiring into the 
relation between the physical and mental 
life as indicated by their apparent action 
one upon the other, rejecting in their order 
the hypotheses, first, that consciousness 
and brain, mind and body act one upon the 
other as two distinct beings or substances ; 



The Last Thing in the World 77 

or, second, that the mind is only a product 
of the body, a variant form of bodily 
action in which the brain secretes thought 
as the liver secretes bile ; or, third, that the 
body is only a form or product of one or 
several mental beings ; and, fourth, accept- 
ing the hypothesis that mind and body, 
consciousness and brain are evolved as dif- 
ferent forms of expression of one and the 
same being, who is essentially spiritual 
and whose activities are always mani- 
fested in parallel lines, sometimes report- 
ing first as mental, sometimes as physical, 
but always eventually in both. Now while 
Science knows only these two forms of 
life, the mental and physical, it does not 
deny that there are others. In fact its 
findings demand an as yet unf ound inner- 
most essence of existence to which the 
mental or subjective life stands nearest, 
and from which both mental and physical 
life proceed, thus bringing in sight our 
double ancestry — that of the flesh and its 
mind — and the ancestry of the spirit 
which makes God our Father, and enables 
us to affirm "My Father and I are one," 
and to sweep back past birthdays and say, 
"before Abraham was, I am." 



78 The Voice Eternal 

Now the whole economy of human exis- 
tence hinges on the conflict between these 
two ancestries, as to supremacy. For the 
struggle is as old as the race and as new 
as the last-born babe. Recognizing that 
life can never reach the heights of free- 
dom until the spirit gains the ascendancy, 
Jesus said, ' ' Except a man be born of the 
spirit he cannot see the kingdom of God. 
Except he live in the spirit where the 
motives and ideals of the spiritual life are 
in the position of mastery, he cannot know 
the "righteousness, peace, and joy" that 
life is intended to have as its daily atmos- 
phere. We are apt to dwell too much on 
the fact of the mind influencing the body, 
and the body in turn influencing the mind, 
and trying to heal the one by healing the 
other, and fail to put emphasis upon the 
spiritual source of life, and fail to carry 
the governing center of life into the spirit- 
ual I am, whose infinite peace and health 
and ease will express itself in a parallel 
manifestation in mind and body. This 
does not mean that life henceforth has no 
conflicts. The battle will not be over till 
the sunset gun is fired. The hymn of the 
spirit-crowned man is, 



The Last Thing in the World 79 

"Oh watch and fight and pray, 
The battle ne'er give o'er. 
Renew it boldly every day, 
And help divine implore. " 

His conflicts are as real as ever, but he can 
say, " Thanks be to God who giveth me the 
victory. ' ' 

Now while science can discover to us 
grounds for such a hope as this, theology 
actually beholds God dwelling in the flesh, 
and manifesting the divine character in 
such a way that to see such an one is to 
see the Father, and it calls that combina- 
tion the "Son of God," and says " Beloved 
now are we the Sons of God" ; and it bids 
us to come to that place of Spiritual 
Supremacy where we can say "I live, and 
yet not I live, but Christ liveth in me, ' ' and 
its proof is that we go about doing good. 
It is said of Martin Luther that some one 
halloed at his gate and asked, "Does Mar- 
tin Luther live here ? ? ' and the answer of 
the sturdy reformer was: "No, but Jesus 
Christ lives here. ' ' And he was nearer the 
truth than many of his followers, for this 
oneness with God was the truth that Jesus 
Christ lived, aiid the boon which he prayed 
that each of his disciples and all men 



80 The Voice Eternal 

might possess. Here then ends our quest. 
Choose any field of knowledge we may, all 
paths lead to our divine birthright — the 
privilege of living the life of God in the 
world; of manifesting all those qualities 
of the divine character that can be known 
by men only as they see them incarnate in 
human life ; and eventually to realize the 
completeness of the divine life in us. For 
when Faith has fought its last battle, and 
Love has run its last merciful errand of 
service, Hope, the ultimate thing in the 
world will still tower over the wrecks of 
time, and stretch out expectant hands to 
receive the perfect fruition of God dwell- 
ing in the flesh. Something in us answers 
to our own. 

" Dwelt there no divineness in us, 
How could God's divineness win us?" 

Follow then this voice eternal along the 
highways of peace, plenty, health, and 
power until your kingdom is perfected; 
until the "fearful," the "unbelieving," 
and all "liars" are cast out, and you can 
"surrender it to God who shall be all in 
all." 



CHAPTER IX 

THE CHEIST WITHIN] 

npHAT we may get the full sig- 
, t mficance of this truth of the in- 
dwelling God follow me in observa- 
tions on the most beautiful and far- 
reaching conception of the spiritual 
ideal embodied in the gospel message, in 
such verses as "I live, and yet not I, but 
Christ liveth in me"; -Ye are dead, and 
your life is hid with Christ in God" • "Till 
Christ be formed in you, ' ' etc. This is the 
hear, of the gospel, the key to its store- 
house of life, health, love, and power. It 
brings out the mystical phase of the 
Christian life so prominently that one is 
apt 10 ask what place it can have in a scien- 
tific and philosophical religious move- 
ment The answer lies in the simple fact 
that the power of a suggestion concerning 
a person or a supposed truth depends on 
our conception of the scope of the truth 
or the character and power of the person 
in whose hands we place our welfare. For 
instance we are much more apt to trust 
tully a physician of years of experience 
and a great reputation, than we are to call 



82 The Voice Eternal 

ill a young man just out of the medical 
school. So likewise if the one giving us 
a suggestion of any sort be known as a 
mere tyro in the knowledge of mental and 
spiritual things as healing forces, his sug- 
gestions will have little influence on us, 
while if we esteem him as a master or an 
adept in such wisdom then he speaks to us 
with the voice of authority, and not as the 
scribes, and sin, and disease, and sickness 
of all sorts of human ills pass out at his 
word. Likewise when we are giving our- 
selves suggestions if the truth is conceived 
as a partial and limited one, the results 
will be meager, while if we conceive the 
truth to take on the character of an uni- 
versal law r the results in health and welfare 
will be greatly magnified; or if we think 
of ourselves as "poor weak worms of the 
dust" suggestions coming from such a 
source will be greatly weakened, if not 
countered altogether. 

Now if, instead of a self that can do 
nothing, we face our ills with the thought 
that, "I can do all things through Christ 
that strengtheneth me/' our suggestions 
will have in them the authority of the Son 
of God and they cannot fail. The place 



The Christ Within 83 

therefore of the Christ in any scheme for 
moral, social, or physical betterment is 
secure for the highest authority that can be 
given to a movement is to quote him as 
being its leader. And for an individual 
to have truly found the Christ within, of 
whom Moses and the prophets did write, 
is to have started on the pathway of wis- 
dom that will at last unfold and exemplify 
every problem of life. But let us be sure 
that we have found him in the true sense 
of the term. Jesus the Saviour said, "Of 
myself I can do nothing. The Father that 
dwelleth. in me He doeth the works.' ' 
That is to say the human Jesus could not 
do those mighty works, but the divine 
Christ in him could and did. We must 
recognise the essential humanity of Jesus 
our Lord because he so often spoke and 
acted and lived like a man. We have also 
to recognize his divinity because he so 
often spoke and acted like a divine person. 
It was the human Jesus who was weary 
with long journeys, arduous toils, and 
ceaseless vigils; it was the human Jesus 
who fainted on the last journey and died 
on the cross. It was the divine Christ who 
opened the eyes of the blind, cast out dev- 



84 The Voice Eternal 

ils, raised the dead, healed the lepers, and 
said to the tired world, "Come unto me 
and find rest." That same dual nature 
is consciously in every man. The purely 
human with its ills and aches, its sorrows 
and troubles, stumbling through life so 
self-centered and engrossed that we never 
catch a glimpse of the divine nature of 
which we are partakers, a christing — an 
anointing that abideth so that "we 
need not that any man teach us" as St. 
John says. We utterly fail to call on a 
power within us that will banish all our 
ills, diseases, and troubles, and enable us 
to live in the fulness of peace, health, love, 
and power. When he said "Come unto 
me" it was not to the human Jesus but 
to the divine Christ — the life of God that 
dwelt within him. His effort was always 
to get those who came to him to look to the 
Father who was abiding in him, whose 
words he spoke and whose works he did, 
and of whom he could say, "I and the 
Father are one," that they might realize 
their oneness with the Father as he had 
realized it. Finally he said one day that 
it was expedient for them that he should 
go away, else the comforter would not 



The Christ Within 85 

come — they would never enter into the 
fulness of their inheritance so long as 
they had him to depend on. He was 
trying to get them to see that the object 
of all seeking was the Father, and that 
the Father was waiting to become the 
Christ — the anointed in them. But they 
were so busy clinging to his mortal self, 
for the loaves and the fishes, and the evi- 
dence of the senses that unless he went 
away they would keep on looking to his 
personality and would never know that 
the same spirit of truth who was so 
mighty in him was waiting to manifest his 
power in them as soon as they recognized 
their oneness with him. The Infinite 
power which had hitherto had but one 
power station was henceforth to have a 
station in every man who accepted his 
divine heritage, and out from him would 
go those same marvelous virtues that 
wrought the blessings of peace and health 
at the touch and word of the man of 
Nazareth. "Out of his heart shall flow 
rivers of living water." 

To teach men and lead them into these 
privileges he left directions for the 
organization of his church with certain 



86 The Voice Eternal 

symbolic forms setting forth the entering 
into and manifestation of Christ-like 
life. St. Paul said that when a man is 
"baptized into Christ" he "puts on 
Christ." In other words attending that 
outward form is a spiritual content — an 
inner substance, which is nothing less than 
the conscious recognition that the Christ 
of God is in us as he was in Jesus of Naz- 
areth. And in the act of Confirmation 
the believer's attention is directed to the 
sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit, which 
he is taught to believe now abides in him 
waiting to be called on that he may show 
forth his power, so that it is the final act 
by which the believer is ceremonially in- 
ducted into the Christ-life. Then if he has 
indeed accepted the real content of the 
gospel message he can say, "I live and yet 
not I, but Christ liveth in me. ' ' And that 
this life may flourish we are invited to a 
Holy Supper whose consecrated elements 
feed the body and suggest how the life of 
God is constantly imparted to the life 
within us. 

Now if there be any difference between 
this Christ-life and the Christian life I 
should say that it was this; a christian 



The Christ Within 87 

life consists in following after the exam- 
ple of Christ, submitting to his ordinances, 
imitating his good works and seeking to 
obey a Christ and a God who are outside, 
apart from and above us somewhere, who 
may be persuaded to hear our petitions 
and forgive our sins and at last get home 
to heaven. A Christ-life in a word is a 
looking to the Christ within us, and letting 
him manifest his divine presence and 
power as the son of God — a state of con- 
scious oneness with God that enables its 
possessor to say, "All things are mine, 
and mine is Christ's and Christ is 
God's." Now just what that means we can 
gather from the incident of Jesus asleep 
on the hard seat of the fisherman's boat 
in the midst of a raging storm. The mere 
fact of his divine presence did not keep 
the wind from blowing, the boat from 
rocking, nor the disciples from feeling 
terrified. But when he was awakened 
and called upon, he arose, and at once the 
divine life was manifest, he rebuked the 
wind and the sea and there was a great 
calm. Has not our boat been rocked by 
disease, sorrow, poverty, worry, and what 
not, simply because we do not awaken the 



88 The Voice Eternal 

Christ within us and call upon him to 
manifest in us the hope of glory. " Be- 
loved now are we the sons of God .... and 
we shall be like him when He shall 
appear. " In other words, when the Christ 
in us is manifest he will be like the Christ 
that was manifest in Jesus of Nazareth, in 
whom all fulness of love, of life, of power, 
°f ej°y? of all good dwelt. So that we are 
complete in this Christ-life, and can boldly 
say, "In Christ all things are mine," "I 
can do all things through Christ that 
strengtheneth me." So that if you are 
manifesting sickness it is because your 
attention is fixed upon the circumference 
of life and you are to turn away from that 
to the center of your being where the 
Infinite dwells and say, "Christ is my life, 
Christ is my health, Christ is my strength, 
Christ is perfect, I will now manifest 
Christ." Say it with the certainty that it 
is the truth of all truths, and you will feel 
the fountain of your life bubble over with 
a strange new power that radiates through 
sickness, disease and pain, and displaces 
them by manifesting the health that was 
in Jesus. 

Suppose that it is money you need, not 



The Christ Within 89 

want but actually need. Here is a bank 
note that unlike all other bank notes can 
be cashed every day of our lives and be as 
good as ever the next day. It is "My God 
shall supply all your need according to his 
riches in glorv by Christ Jesus. ' ' Phil. 4, 
19. Now read it intelligently. "My God" 
— that's the banker's name — "shall sup- 
ply" — that is his promise to pay — "all 
your need" — that's the size of the check — 
"according to his riches" — that's the 
bank's capital — "in glory" that's the 
bank's location — "by Christ Jesus" that's 
the cashier's name. Why should you go 
about thinking poverty, and manifesting 
poverty, when all the time your father is 
rich in houses and lands, and holdeth the 
wealth of the worlds in his hands. Say 
to yourself, ' ' Christ is my abundant sup- 
ply; he is here in me now and greatly 
desires to manifest himself as my supply ; 
his desires are fulfilled now and I am filled 
full of all needed things." Don't begin 
to ask how he is going to do this ; probably 
it will be the very way that you would 
never think about, but just hold to the 
thought that he is your abundant supply, 
and that he will honor your faith a hun- 



90 The Voice Eternal 

died fold. We have only to choose to have 
him do this for us, and having once put 
the matter in his hands, let it rest with him 
who longs to be to us through Christ the 
abundance of all things that we need, nor 
try to take it back, but say to ourselves, 
"It is done; God hath blessed us with all 
spiritual blessings in heavenly places in 
Christ." We have now only to wait in 
perfect faith for the manifestation of that 
which we have asked. It is not easy to 
trust the Christ within us for all things 
when we first begin. Such a habit is not 
spontaneous, it comes only after repeated 
effort and repeated proof that it is the 
royal highway to peace, plenty, and power. 
We begin by trusting him with small 
things, but by and by we come to trust him 
for all things. 

The question of what was Jesus doing 
before he came working his wonders has 
never been satisfactorily answered, but we 
know that when some man comes working 
the works of Jesus, healing the sick, loos- 
ing the bound, etc., then know that he did 
not come into this faith in a moment, but 
that with clenched fists and face set as a 
flint he has held fast to the Christ within, 



The Christ Within 91 

trusting where lie could not see, until he 
found himself manifesting "the faith of 
the Son of God." Begin by thinking and 
acting these things and you will come to 
know the Christ the spirit of truth. 

And remember that the key word to all 
this attainment is NOW. With God there 
is but one time — the eternal NOW. Say- 
ing or believing that salvation for the soul 
or health for the body are somewhere in 
the future always puts them somewhere 
in the future and just beyond our grasp. 
Behold now is the accepted time for all 
forward movements for the personal wel- 
fare. Jesus said nothing about our 
being saved from our distresses in 
the future, or after death, but now. 
God's work is finished in us now, 
the moment we believe. To be sure 
Christ manifests himself in different 
ways, and we must be content to walk in 
ways that we would not have chosen for 
the voice of the Christ within will direct 
us unerringly where he wants us to go. 
Like Abraham who followed the inner 
voice not knowing where he went — from 
one act of faith to another until God said 



92 The Voice Eternal 



to him, "Because thou hast done this I 
will both bless thee and make thee a bless- 
ing." 

Get out of this chapter then some practi- 
cal help. Why should we worry about 
tomorrow? We cannot live it till it 
arrives, and then only a moment at a time. 
Fill the present NOW, the day and hour 
with hope and trust and praise and ser- 
vice. Why worry ye for tomorrow, suffi- 
cient for the day is the evil thereof, and 
for that matter the good thereof. When 
the worry fog begins to darken the soul, 
shine on it with all the optimism of faith 
in the Christ within you, and level on it 
all the guns of a sane philosophy. Say 
to yourself, "I will not worry, for every 
worry thought weakens me for the conflict 
when it comes. It may never come, but 
if so I will not concern myself about it 
until it arrives, and then I shall have all 
my powers conserved to meet it in 
triumph. ' ' 

The second idea to always hold in mind 
is, that the Christ that was in Jesus must 
ever be going about doing good, must be 
going out to others pointing out to them 
the secret that deliverance from every ill 



The Christ Within 93 

of this life lay in the truth of the 
FATHER IN THEM and patiently wait- 
ing and working till they were awakened 
to this understanding of life. 

And the Christ in us will first be con- 
tent with our recognition of the fact, hut 
ere long we must pass the word out to 
others, and he will not be content until we 
have begun at Jerusalem (at home) and 
finished by telling it to the uttermost 
parts of the earth. Have you grasped the 
truth? Pass it on. Does Christ dwelling 
in you become the dominant, triumphant 
factor in your life ? Pass it on, and do it 
with all the tact and patience of Jesus, 
telling one to go and shew the health 
authorities, and another to tell no man. 
Go about doing good. Help to awaken the 
sleeping passenger on board so many of 
these storm-tossed lives that he may arise 
and speak peace to them, and after awhile 
you will be able to say, ' ' Christ is all and 
in all to me." 



CHAPTER X. 

THE SPIRITUAL BASIS OF HEALTH. 

NOT by might nor by power but by 
my spirit saitli the Lord/' tells 
us in so many words that all power in its 
last analysis is spiritual. In all things 
earthly there is first that which is natural, 
and then that which is spiritual. All 
materials things are the expression of 
things profoundly spiritual. And it is by 
the study of material things with essen- 
tially this conception ever before us that 
we come to a correct view of spiritual 
things. St. Paul says, "For the invisible 
things of God, even his eternal power and 
Godhead, are clearly seen through the 
creation of the world, being understood 
by the things that are made." The uni- 
verse is built after the human plan, and 
man is in the image of God, so that we 
have made the first great step toward the 
knowledge of God when we have mas- 
tered the knowledge of ourselves. We 
have a material body and dwelling in it 
and co-extensive with it is a spiritual 
body with organs of similar character 
and function. This spiritual body is the 



The Spiritual Basis of Health 95 

Subconscious self. The conscious side of 
the mind does not seem to have any ex- 
istence apart from the union of these two, 
The child begins to develop consciousness 
when the light falls on the eye, or when 
after repeated experiences it becomes con- 
scious of its mother as the source of nu- 
trition. And so step by step the con- 
scious mind as a function of this union of a 
spiritual and material being is developed. 
With its various methods of reasoning it 
is fitted to exercise the office of monitor 
in this world of truth and error, but will 
be unnecessary in a world where only 
truth exists. In the day when this union 
is dissolved this function ceases and its 
thoughts perish. The subconscious is the 
real immortal, spiritual part of us. It is 
this with which the Infinite Spirit is iden- 
tified and inseparably joined. It is 
through the Subconscious that the spirit 
manifests forth himself in the form of 
flesh and blood. It is here that the ele- 
ments of the divine character are devel- 
oped. The part played by the conscious 
mind in this process is pictured out in the 
32nd chapter of Exodus where Objective 
Moses argues with Subjective Moses and 



96 The Voice Eternal 

points out to him a better way. All the 
tides of the Infinite life move into us from 
the Subjective side, and are guided and 
used under the direction of the Objective 
side. 

Every age has had its method of con- 
tacting this Infinite life and using its 
power and energies. Any exercise by 
which the Objective has been held more 
or less in abeyance has been most effect- 
ive. There can be no doubt that a life 
given up to meditation, prayer, and good 
works will manifest more of that spirit 
than one which does not so exercise itself. 
On the same principle of exalting the 
subjective a person under the stress of a 
great emotion growing out of personal 
peril, or that of a loved one, or danger to 
country, will find himself doing prodigies 
of valor. Under such conditions the eyes 
will flash, the face will glow and the body 
will be filled with a new and strange 
energy. A weak and fragile body will 
seem to be indued with tireless strength, 
and the devout soul will realize that he is 
helped of God, and will say, "I could not 
have done it myself, God helped me." 
That one supreme authority on the spir- 



The Spiritual Basis of Health 97 

itual experiences of humanity, the Bible, 
abounds in illustrations of this fact. Now 
it is also true that what is accomplished 
under the pressure of some great crisis, 
in which we contact God, may be as truly 
and fullv achieved under the conditions 
of normal life, by knowing and apply- 
ing the laws of the spiritual life, in ac- 
cepting and affirming our oneness with the 
Spirit with all that it means, and so let- 
ting God augment our strength, by iden- 
tifying himself with our life. And it is 
true beyond any reasonable doubt that 
the measure of our power is found in the 
sort of instrument we furnish the Spirit 
to work in and through. 

And it is also true that there is no es- 
sential difference between the power that 
is manifest in the normal life when we 
speak the healing word, or touch with 
the hand that gives health — actions born 
out of an abiding sense of the Infinite, 
and the power that manifests in the word 
or touch when done under the sense of a 
mighty tide of spiritual emotion or in- 
spiration. Whatever difference there is 
consists of quantity or volume and not of 
quality. It is all of God. But we have 



98 The Voice Eternal 

always to refer things to their divine 
source, as when our Lord attributed his 
miracle working power to the Father. 
"The works that I do, I do not of myself, 
but the Father that dwelleth in me, He 
doeth the works." So his words of wis- 
dom were referred to the same source. 
On the other hand it was, "The words 
that I speak unto you they are spirit 
and they are life." "I will, be thou 
clean." "Take up thy bed and walk." 
In like manner our absolute de- 
pendence on the spirit is always be- 
ing emphasized. "Without me ye can 
do nothing" is the true statement 
that all our power to do anything is de- 
rived from him, whether it be the small- 
est duty or the acts that are to be epoch- 
making in our own or others' lives, and 
therefore the whole question of power 
must be referred to God." I have read 
once, yea twice, that power belongeth to 
God." On the other hand, such words 
as, "Ye shall ask what ye will"; "Be 
it unto thee even as thou wilt," seem 
to place the conditioning of that 
power within ourselves. In a word, 
God works power in as we work it out. It 



The Spiritual Basis of Health 99 

is merely a question of how to let that 
divine power find expression in any in- 
dividual. 

In the transmission of electric power 
the two main factors are those of insula- 
tion and carrying capacity, or the size 
and quality of the wire. ISTo matter with 
what rapidity the armature may sweep 
over the magnetic field unless these two 
conditions be favorable there will be little 
or no transmission of power. And it is 
certain that unless these same conditions 
are present in spiritual activities there 
will be no reception or transmission of 
spiritual energy. The fact is clear that 
the limitless power of the Living God is 
about us and in us pressing for expres- 
sion, and it can be found by the insulation 
of the Subconscious, which is done in 
greater or less degree in such exercises as 
prayer, religious meditation, patience 
under great affliction, heroic fidelity to 
great ideals and principles, loving service, 
and other activities in which most church 
people engage. Some who have been most 
effective instruments for the Spirit have 
had no other thought of how they could 
attain except by ceaseless vigils, fasting, 
and importunate prayer. Our Lord him- 



100 The Voice Eternal 

self found it necessary to go apart into 
mountain and desert places where he 
might commune with his Father, and he 
and his disciples have opportunity to re- 
cuperate their depleted forces. This prac- 
tice of being alone with God has never 
been improved on, although the method of 
its practice may differ. One may by prac- 
tice hold his objective faculties in a 
passive state, inhibit all conscious thought, 
and so open wide the channel of the sub- 
conscious through which the limitless 
power of God may flow to accomplish any 
purpose toward which it may be directed. 
So that "he m&y ask what he will and it 
shall be done." This brings us inevitably 
to the fact that it is the will that deter- 
mines the volume of power that shall be 
manifested. When one has made the in- 
sulation complete, it is then with a sense 
of perfect authority that he can say, "I 
will, be thou healed," and know that it 
shall be done. It is well therefore to 
study the methods of cultivating the 
will power so that in the emergencies of 
life without clenching your fists, or set- 
ting your jaw, or knitting your brow, 
you may at wall draw all the supplies you 



The Spiritual Basis of Health 101 

need, as calmly as you do in the ordinary 
duties of life. I do not think of anything 
that so thoroughly impresses this idea as 
the sight of a trolley car running along 
with its outstretched arm reaching for 
power, without which it cannot go. And 
there is that sense of utter dependence on 
the spirit's power that keeps the inner 
eye forever on the source of power, and 
the subjective arm reaching out to touch 
the live wire of Omnipotence. And out 
of this there comes the confidence that 
can say to a sick friend, "You are going 
to be better, and you will gradually come 
back to perfect health," and know that it 
will be as you have said. Until you are 
consciously in touch with the Spirit there 
will be the lack of positive certainty with 
which you speak the healing word. This 
established and your will lays hold of all 
energy so that you may live with a mini- 
mum of ills and a maximum of comfort 
in serving yourself and others. 

There can be no doubt that a normal 
life is intended to pass on its journey 
without the handicap of all such ills as 
most people endure. And if it seems that 
the bulk of human experience contradicts 



102 The Voice Eternal 

this statement, we have to remember that 
probably not one in a hundred of us had 
the advantage of a good start in the world. 
Upon our arrival, in addition to the im- 
pediments of heredity, we found the ig- 
norance, superstition, and general blun- 
dering of those in charge of us, responsi- 
ble for a lot of bad kinks in our stock in 
trade for the career on which we had en- 
tered. Thus it happens that most of us 
have a large assortment of abnormal con- 
ditions on hand with which to start, and 
then we have the blunders and follies of 
youth, and the mistakes that grow out of 
early bigotry and ignorance all to outlive 
and undo before we can reach the place 
of actually living a normal life. And 
often before we have unloaded this in- 
cubus we have entered upon some career 
from which we find it difficult or impos- 
sible to extricate ourselves if we ever want 
to. So often I have had some one come 
to me wanting to enter upon some mis- 
sion of service to his fellows, and I have 
had to point out to him that he could not 
impart to others what he did not himself 
possess. I have had those who felt called 
to mission fields, and after starting in and 



The Spiritual Basis of Health 103 

getting into possession of health, and the 
right poise of mind, they discovered that 
they had no possible business going to 
mission fields. This does not mean to say 
that such a divine call does not come to 
normal people to do such work, but I am 
rather saying that things often seem ut- 
terly different to one in sickness and in 
health, and am emphasizing the fact that 
our first great problem is the mastery of 
ourselves. 

The discovery that there is within us a 
vast unused reservoir of power awaiting 
our exploitation is the challenge to enter 
at once on a campaign of self-knowledge 
and of the use of these forces so that we 
may undo the ravages of disease, break 
the power of bad mental and physical 
habits, and get up to the plane of normal 
living. 

To do this requires, first, the conviction 
that the forces within you and contigu- 
ous to you are sufficient for all your 
needs. That all possible needs are anti- 
cipated and provided for in this spiritual 
endowment. Second, that these forces 
are under your control if you choose to 
have them be so, and that they will do 



104 The Voice Eternal 

anything you set them doing, and that 
they have no right to do anything else 
than what you put them at. And if they 
are manifesting sickness, pain, or ill- 
fortune they are acting without your 
authority, and therefore as the master of 
the house you must demand that they 
manifest just what you want and nothing 
else. The question of who is running the 
house must not be raised for a moment. 
Assert this with all the will power you 
can command— " I AM THE MASTER. " 
Then you will have to face two things 
that are of the utmost importance : First, 
that there will often be slow progress; 
you will not be able to reconstruct your- 
self in a day. It often takes time so that 
you must settle down to the proposition 
that any stronghold that cannot be taken 
by assault may be taken by a siege, so that 
you must have patience and let your soul 
abide in the peace of God within you, 
knowing that you cannot fail. Second, 
sometimes you will feel actually worse 
than better after the first attempt. This 
may be due to the chemical changes that 
take place as a result of the new thought 
forces you have set in motion. Or, it may 



The Spiritual Basis of Health 105 

arise out of the conflicting thoughts you 
are sending to your subconscious mind. 
For instance, you give yourself the sugges- 
tion that your ills or troubles will be at an 
end, and the proposed results are so great 
from causes so seemingly inadequate, be- 
cause you are not acquainted with them, 
that there arises a doubt in your mind 
which is stronger than your health sug- 
gestion, and as a result you are worse than 
vou were at first. These two difficulties 
you must be prepared to meet. They do 
not always arise, but often they do, and it 
is well to provide against a lapse of faith, 
on account of a temporary failure. 

One thing becomes very apparent as 
one goes on practicing this divine science. 
It is that there is always cropping out 
the human element so that we must be for- 
ever using terms that apply to human 
activity, and yet there is always the sense 
of something outside the range of purely 
hmnan forces so that we cannot avoid 
using the terms that belong only to things 
divine. There is nothing in this life that 
is purely human, and for that matter 
nothing that is purely divine. These are 
terms of accommodation. No man can 



106 The Voice Eternal 

tell where one quits and the other begins. 
They are in fact one. However boundless 
may seem the resources of the subcon- 
scious itself, it grows out of the fact that 
it is merged into the Infinite spirit of 
which it is an individual expression. 
Therefore we say that this power is of 
God the Infinite Spirit, and that it is es- 
sentially spiritual. True we may use 
methods that seem very human, such as 
mixing clay with spittle with which to 
anoint a blind man's eyes, yet only the 
method is human. The forces themselves 
are divine, and the results are equally 
divine, so that when we are soothing a 
wounded spirit with words of comfort, or 
driving out some mental obsession, by 
sheer force of personality, or quieting an 
aching member of the human frame by 
manipulation, or using some material 
remedy of proven potency, or employing 
the surgeon's knife to remove some ab- 
normal tissue, we are doing the works of 
God, and we are God's men in that par- 
ticular service. 

After carefully studying the effects of 
the various methods of presenting the 
healing truth to a patient, I have found 
that even though I did not actually use 



The Spiritual Basis of Health 107 

any outward form of prayer or religious 
exercise, the very assumption on the pa- 
tient's part that it was of God and in har- 
mony with the faith in which he had been 
raised has been of immense help. Re- 
ligious faith is the one peerless dynamic 
in this world. It has built every civiliza- 
tion of history, and when perverted or 
allowed to become a stationary, instead of 
an evolutionary force, it has been the de- 
stroyer. The fact that God wills your un- 
dertaking makes it irresistible. I have 
had the greatest sense of authority over 
disease and pain when I have been the 
most conscious of in-tune-ness with the 
Infinite. This grows not only out of the 
suggestion but out of the fact. Let a man 
take his stand on the foundation fact of 
his oneness with God ; then let him become 
passive and receptive to every intimation 
of the Spirit; then let him believe that 
because he has God dwelling in him there 
is no fixed limit to what he may have or 
do ; and then let him with unshaken pur- 
pose of will determine to manifest the 
power of God, and health and happiness, 
and peace and power will be multiplied in 
him through his knowledge of God. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE "WORD" FOR WELL-BEING. 

NO BOOK is so rich in healing sug- 
gestion as the Bible. Its Psychology 
is always correct. Beginning with the 
childhood of the race, it deals largely with 
the motive of fear because fear is the 
most elemental and powerful of emotions 
in undeveloped mankind. Slowly it 
moves out to other motives as the rule of 
action. Like all true history, the Bible 
deals with the facts in the special realm 
it undertakes to chronicle. Prom its be- 
ginning to its close its one theme is Life 
with all that pertains to it. Generally 
speaking, the Old Testament is the his- 
tory of the childhood of the race, while 
the New Testament is the history of the 
race coming into its maturity. In the 
one, Pear holds a large place, while in 
the other, Love holds the place of the 
supreme motive. The first question of 
the Old Testament is, " Where art thou?" 
picturing an offended deity seeking a 
fearing, sinful soul that he may inflict 
upon it a merited punishment. The first 
question of the New Testament is, 



The "Word" for Weil-Being 109 

" Where is lie?" featuring a needy and 
devout soul seeking to find the God of love 
that he may worship him. 

Now while these are the character- 
istics of the parts of the Bible, it is 
true that in that far off age an en- 
raptured spirit caught glimpses of a 
better day, and a better w r ay of serv- 
ing the Lord. The sweet singer of 
Israel comforted his soul with that won- 
derful thought, that even at the entrance 
of the shadow of death, "I will fear no 
evil, for Thou art with me.' 7 For the 
same reason he would not ' ' fear the terror 
by day, nor the arrow that flieth by night, 
nor the pestilence that walketh in dark- 
ness, nor the destruction that wasteth at 
noonday." Because he had made the 
most High his habitation no evil should 
befall him, neither any plague come nigh 
his dwelling ! As we enter the ISTew Testa- 
ment teaching, Fear of the anger of God 
is replaced with confidence in the Love of 
God. 

We pass o.ut of the negative realm of 
"Thou shalt not" into the positive realm 
of "Thou shalt." The first word of the 
angel to Joseph was, "Fear not, Joseph." 



110 The Voice Eternal 

The first word to Mary was, "Fear not, 
Mary." So often was the word of the 
Master "Fear not — be not afraid— peace 
be with you" that the whole trend of the 
gospels and after is toward love as the 
supreme motive of action. He condensed 
the negative forms of the law of fear into 
two great positive constructive sentences, 
so that forever afterward Love should be 
the fulfilling of the law. True, the Ten 
Commandments stand for something that 
will be essential to human welfare as long 
as the nature of man continues in its pres- 
ent stage of existence and development, 
but when will the Moses arise who shall 
reach such heights of inspiration as to be 
able to put these laws into constructive 
and correct psychological form, with Love 
as their motive? 

To make the thought clearer the follow- 
ing is suggested as a stepping stone in the 
right direction: 

I. I am the God of Love. 

II. Worship me in Spirit and in Truth. 

III. Eevere the name of God. 

IV. Keep all days holy and rest one 
day in seven. 

V. Honor thy parents and so add years 
to thy life. 



The "Word" for Weil-Being 111 

VI. Hold sacred the life of God that is 
in man. 

VII. Let thy love for all things be with 
a pure heart. 

VIII. Be honest. 

IX. Speak the truth. 

X. Desire earnestly the best things. 
But we need not wait for such a form to 

become authoritative with the sanction of 
the church. That will come along in good 
time. Meantime these words and others 
rich in devotion and ripe with ages of test- 
ing form an arsenal of spiritual weapons 
of offense and defense against every ill 
that besets us in wrong thought forms. 
Some of these are here formulated under 
proper headings for use in meditation and 
affirmation when we have to meet the evils 
that may assail us from the mental and 
spiritual sides of our life. 

For the hour when Fear and worry are 
our foes open the treasury of God's word 
as it has been worked out in human expe- 
rience and read : 

I will fear no evil for Thou art with me. 

Fear not for I am with thee, be not dis- 
mayed for I am thy God. I will strengthen 



112 The Voice Eternal 

thee ; I will help thee ; yea, I will uphold 
thee with the right hand of my righteous- 
ness. 

Be strong and of good courage; be not 
afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the 
Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever 
thou goest. 

That we being delivered from the hand 
of our enemies might serve him without 
fear all the days of our life, 

I know whom I have believed and am 
persuaded that he is able to keep that 
which I have committed to him against 
that day. 

Perfect love casteth out fear. 

For the day when we are weak. 

In the Lord God is everlasting strength. 

I can do all things through Christ that 
strengtheneth me. 

They that wait upon the Lord shall re- 
new their strength. 

He is able to do exceeding, abundantly 
above all that we ask or think. 

Be strong and of good courage . . . 
the Lord thy God goeth with thee; He 
will not fail nor forsake thee. 



The " Word " for Weil-Being 113 

When poverty comes as an armed man. 

My God shall supply all your need ac- 
cording to his riches in glory by Christ 
Jesus, 

And hath blessed us with all spiritual 
blessings in heavenly places in Christ 
Jesus. 

In my Father's house are many man- 
sions. I go to prepare a place for thee. 

Thou shalt remember the Lord thy God ; 
for it is He that giveth thee power to get 
wealth. 

Thou shalt not borrow, but thou shalt 
lend to many nations. 

Diligent in business, fervent in spirit, 
serving the Lord. 

He feedeth the ravens; shall He not 
much more care for you ? 

When Faith is weak. 

Have the faith of God. (R V.) 

I had fainted unless I had believed to 
see the goodness of the Lord in the land 
of the living. 

All things are possible to him that be- 
lieveth. 

Ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be 
done unto you. 



114 The Voice Eternal 

Your Father knoweth what things ye 
have need of before you ask him. 

Great is thy faith, be it unto thee even 
as thou wilt. 

When your happiness is eclipsed. 

A merry heart doeth good like a medi- 
cine. 

If ye know these things, happy are ye if 
ye do them. 

Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob 
for his help. 

All things work together for good to 
them that love God. 

Rejoice in the Lord, and again I say, re- 
joice. 

These things have I spoken unto you 
that your joy might be full. 

For wakeful hours. 

He giveth his beloved sleep. 

Gome unto me all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden and I will give you rest. 

I will lay me down in peace and sleep, 
for Thou makest me to dwell in safety. 

There remaineth therefore a rest for the 
people of God; they that believe do enter 
into rest. 



The " Word " for Weil-Being 115 

His banner over me was love. 
Thou shalt lie down and thy sleep shall 
be sw r eet. 

When your enemies trouble you. 

The Lord shall cause thine enemies that 
rise up against thee to be smitten before 
thy face. They shall come out against 
thee one way, and flee before thee seven 
ways. 

Love your enemies. Pray for them that 
despitefully use you. 

Father forgive them, they know not 
what they do. 

And now shall mine head be lifted up 
above my enemies round about me. 

If thine enemy hunger feed him. 

To find Peace. 

Great peace have they that love thy law 
and nothing shall offend them. 

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace 
whose mind is stayed on thee because he 
trusteth thee. 

Peace I leave with you ; my peace I give 
unto you. 

The peace of God that passeth all un- 



116 The Voice Eternal i 

derstanding shall keep your hearts and 
minds through Jesus Christ. 

Peace on earth, good will toward men. 

For Healing. 

I am the Lord that healeth thee. 

He healeth all thy diseases. 

The prayer of faith shall save the sick. 

The sun of righteousness shall arise 
with healing in his wings. 

The leaves of the tree are for the heal- 
ing of the nations. 

Thy faith hath made thee whole. 

I cried unto thee and thou hast healed 
me. 

He sent his word and healed them. 

For times of great affliction. 

When thou passest through the waters 
I will be with thee ; and through the rivers 
they shall not overflow thee; when thou 
walkest through the fire thou shalt not be 
burned, neither shall the flame kindle 
upon thee. 

Our present afflictions which are for a 
moment work out for us an exceeding 
great and eternal weight of joy. 



The "Word" for Well- Being 117 

Weeping may endure for the night but 
joy cometh in the morning. 

These are all rich in comfort for they 
are the organized experiences of God's 
people. There can be none better, for a 
suggestion is measured in its power by the 
conception the receiver has of the author- 
ity and power of the person giving it, as 
well as by the greatness of the truth it 
holds. Let the mind dwell upon theso 
words that the eternal God has spoken to 
and through his people, and soon there is 
a mighty uplift of mind and body to him 
who receives them. To be sure there are 
many modern forms of suggestion that 
are short and in the language of the day, 
but these from the treasury of mankind 
are rich with ages of trial and proof. And 
when they are interpreted in the light of 
the modern conception of the oneness of 
God with humanity there is an intimacy 
of contact and an efficacy of action that 
cannot fail. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE LAW OF SUGGESTION. 

I AM often asked, "Is there any book 
that gives the form of suggestions to be 
used in specific cases?" In the nature of 
the case one can hardly do more than to 
give the general principles of suggestion 
with a few illustrations of their use, for 
the reason that no two cases are just alike, 
any more than any two people are just 
alike. A book of forms of suggestion to 
cover all the cases that arise in my prac- 
tice would make a volume something like 
the old fashioned family doctor books that 
are used mostly to hold open the front 
doors of farm houses through the rural 
regions. But to help those who would 
know and use the power of suggestion for 
their own and others' good I will give an 
outline of first principles with illustra- 
tions, and if you will intelligently and 
persistently follow them you mil get re- 
sults in any case amenable to suggestion. 
The mind is Conscious and Sub-con- 
scious. The conscious has to do with that 
realm of sensation and thought of which 
we take cognizance. The sub-conscious has 



The Law of Suggestion 119 

to do with those sensations, thoughts, and 
activities of which we are unconscious. 
The conscious side of the mind is the mas- 
ter of the house of the Lord, usually called 
the body. It is the architect of life and 
destiny. It creates the ideals for body, 
mind and character. It is equipped with 
every method of reasoning so that it may 
determine what is good or bad, right or 
wrong, in a world where these are so en- 
tangled as to set the wisest by the ears. 
It can reason by induction, i.e., it can take 
a large number of separate facts and draw 
from them a general principle or law. It 
can reason by deduction, i. e., it can take 
a given fact and draw from it every logi- 
cal sequence. It can reason by compari- 
son, i. e., it can take a proposed fact and 
compare it with a known fact and deter- 
mine its probable truth or value. It can 
reason by analysis, i. e., it can separate a 
proposition into its elements and deter- 
mine their relative value. It can reason 
by synthesis, i. e., it can take a large num- 
ber of related facts and bind them into 
a consistent whole. It is therefore pe- 
culiarly fitted for such a world as that in 
which we live, but it would have no place 



120 The Voice Eternal 

in a world where only truth and right 
existed. 

The sub-conscious is the servant in the 
house. It can reason only by deduction. 
It cannot compare any suggested fact with 
a known one for the reason that it can hold 
but one idea at a time. It cannot therefore 
tell whether a thing is good or bad, true or 
false. Its deductions from any suggested 
fact are perfectly logical but if there is 
a false premise involved it has no means 
of detecting the fallacy. It is essentially 
the builder of the body. It cannot origi- 
nate anything. It can only carry out 
hereditary tendencies, traditional ideas, 
or things suggested by the conscious mind. 
It is as tenacious in holding to a good idea 
or habit as it is in holding a bad one. It 
will work out any idea held over it by the 
conscious mind. If that idea is repeated 
often enough it will work it out automatic- 
ally, without any conscious thought tak- 
ing place. It is the seat and creature of 
habit. 

All habits are subconscious. And they 
are produced by the repetition of a thought 
in the conscious thinking. And the of tener 
the thought is repeated the more rapidly 



The Law of Suggestion 121 

will the habit be formed. For instance 
if a man smokes one cigar a month he will 
not get the habit very quickly. If he takes 
one per week he will get it four times as 
fast. If he takes one per day he will get 
the habit thirty times as fast. Any idea 
whether good or bad becomes a habit of 
the subconscious on the same principle. 
Set times for "going into the silence" to 
think of the things we want to materialize 
in our lives is a good practice. The of tener 
it is done, the quicker are the results ob- 
tained. We affirm over and over the 
things we want, or just steadily hold them 
in thought and the subconscious takes the 
thought and begins to work it out into ex- 
perience. To get results quickly we must 
set the will to holding the conscious mind 
upon the thing we want to be, and keep 
it off the thing we do not want. One must 
begin by thinking of the thing as some- 
thing to be desired, then as something he 
believes he may have, and then as some- 
thing he is determined to have. Then he 
must think the thing about himself, and 
keep it up until the idea has become a fixed 
habit of the subconscious, and then the 
thought and himself have become one, for 



122 The Voice Eternal 

a man becomes what he persistently 
thinks about. "As a man thinketh in his 
heart so is he." Health, strength, happi- 
ness, success, prosperity, in fact anything 
can be secured by following this method. 
In thinking to form health habits, 
success habits, or any other sort, re- 
member to use only the positive, 
constructive thought forms, and re- 
fuse to allow their opposites any place 
in the conscious thinking. You can, for 
instance, say to yourself a score of times, 
"I will not have the headache," and when 
you have gotten through with your sug- 
gesting the strongest idea you have given 
your mind is that contained in the word 
headache, and in due time it will arrive 
as usual. But if you say, "I shall spend 
the day in perfect comfort ; my head shall 
be filled with sensations of ease, etc., j^ou 
will find that these ideas persistently 
thought will impress on the subconscious 
the idea of ease and comfort, and it will 
proceed to work them out. Pain will go 
only when the subconscious is filled with 
the idea of ease. Poverty will go only 
when it is displaced in the thought habits 
with the idea of prosperity or plenty. Our 



The Law of Suggestion 123 

bad luck will end when we begin to think 
of our good luck. Failure gives way to 
the persistent thought of success. Fear 
gives place to love. Despondency is 
routed by hope. Doubt yields to faith. 
Weakness must go before the thought of 
strength. Self loses its sense of isolation 
by identifying itself with God. Every 
form of obsession goes out into the deep 
by the full realization of the idea of self- 
mastery. 

The designation of the functions of the 
conscious and subconscious is not an ar- 
bitrary arrangement but is based upon 
known facts of Physiology and Psychol- 
ogy. The body is made up of bones, mus- 
cles, nerves, and blood vessels, and various 
fluids. The tissues of the body are com- 
posed of cells, estimated at 1,700 trillions. 

The muscles are divided into two classes 
known as voluntary and involuntary. 
The nervous organism is divided into the 
Cerebro-spinal and Sympathetic systems. 
The voluntary muscles are furnished their 
nerve equipment from the cerebro-spinal 
system, consisting of the brain and spinal 
cord. Presiding over this is the conscious 
mind with its seat of authority in the 



124 The Voice Eternal 

brain, so that we move the body, arms, 
limbs, and other voluntary parts of the 
body by the action of the conscious mind. 
The involuntary muscles such as the 
heart, stomach, liver, kidneys, and the or- 
gans of the pelvic region, are largely 
equipped with nerves from the sympa- 
thetic system whose center is the Solar 
plexus, sometimes called the " Abdominal 
brain/' which is the seat of authority of 
the subconscious mind. Under its direc- 
tion the heart keeps beating, the blood 
keeps moving, the stomach digests food, 
the liver and other organs do their work 
whether we sleep or wake. Incidentally, 
the subconscious carries on the work of 
repairing and creating the 1,700 trillion 
cells of the body, each one equipped with 
a sensory and a motor nerve, a capillary 
from the veins and arteries, and a branch 
of the lymphatic system. Through these 
various channels the subconscious is busy 
every moment running supply trains to 
the cells and running funeral trains away 
from them. Its place as the builder of 
the body is therefore undisputed. For 
while these two nervous systems are inti- 
mately connected and related, their nor- 



The L aw of Suggestion 125 

mal functions are practically independent 
so that all the functions of the internal 
organs are carried on without our giving 
them a conscious thought. In fact, a nor- 
mally healthy man never has occasion to 
think of his stomach or heart or other 
organs at all. The less he does so, the 
better. It is a notorious fact that the 
most depressing exercise one can take is 
to listen to the detailed account of the 
aches and pains and ills of people who 
delight to dwell upon their troubles. If 
there is an exception to this it is the case 
of those who persist in talking about 
themselves or thinking to themselves of 
their dreadful experiences, and fears and 
apprehensions, which are always magni- 
fied if not wholly imaginary. Usually 
there is no malice in the process for they 
are ignorant of the forces whose laws 
they are unconsciously setting into action, 
but the result is none the less deadly. 
Such people ought to be suppressed or 
otherwise shut up until they are treated 
and mentally re-educated to avoid play- 
ing with deadly agencies. This may 
sound harsh but it is judicious, for the 
reason that when the conscious mind 



126 The Voice Eternal 

dwells upon such things the thought is 
at once handed down to the subconscious, 
which immediately telegraphs the abnor- 
mal thought form out through the sym- 
pathetic nervous system to every involun- 
tary muscle and organ of the body, and 
begins to work out an imitation of the 
idea received by, or originated in the con- 
scious mind. The effect may be only a 
brief " depression of spirits/' but if re- 
peated it becomes a habit that deranges 
the action of one or more organs of the 
body. The integrity of the tissue of the 
organ may not be affected but its action 
may be very seriously impaired, in fact 
so much so that it is sometimes difficult 
to tell it from an organic disease in which 
the integrity of the tissues of the organ 
is affected. 

In this w r ay such thoughts as fear, 
worry, grief, trouble, traditional notions 
about hereditary influences, get in their 
deadly work, derange the functions of the 
body, and work havoc to our health, hap- 
piness, and usefulness. The cure is 
brought about by instructing the patient 
in the laws of his own mind. Showing 
him just how he has been unconsciously 



The Law of Suggestion 127 

wrecking his own health and then carry 
it over into the realm of ethics, and show- 
ing him that to know what is good and 
fail to do it is to be an intentional sinner. 
For what he knows he may do he must 
do or be a sinner, if not theologically, at 
least physiologically. He must fill the 
conscious mind with the truth in thought- 
images of health, happiness and useful- 
ness. A cheerful philosophy such as is 
set forth in this book will banish doubts, 
fears, the " blues," and all such like and 
speedily relieve the body of its ills. 

Let it be further remembered, as set 
forth in Chapter I, that every good in 
God's world is attained by obedience to 
the laws by which that good finds expres- 
sion. A man may sit cross-legged and 
look down his nose between his feet and 
think, "I am prosperity," until Gabriel 
sounds his traditional trumpet, but unless 
he obeys the law by which prosperity finds 
expression, by being ' ' diligent in business, 
fervent in spirit, serving the Lord," he 
will probably scratch a poor man's back 
all his life. 

In like manner a man may say, "I am 
health," and go on sleeping in an unven- 



128 The Voice Eternal 

tilated room, neglect to take proper exer- 
cise, or feed his body on an unbalanced 
diet, and in general fail to observe dietetic, 
hygienic, or other laws of health, and 
wonder why his "thought" doesn't create 
a perfectly healthy body. "Faith with- 
out works is dead," said St. James, a 
noted healer of the early church. Health 
without observing its laws is impossible. 
If one does not know the laws then he 
needs to consult a physician, or some one 
trained in such knowledge, and get a start 
in the truly great and often heroic 
achievement of knowing himself. For be 
it remembered that no one man's scheme 
of diet or living can fit every body. There 
are physiological reasons for the saying 
that "what is one man's meat is another's 
poison." The whole matter of applying 
the laws of living is a personal affair, a 
thing to be worked out by the individual 
for himself. 

So also a man may say, "I am a Chris- 
tian," and fill his mind with such notions 
as that there is one holy day and six pro- 
fane ones in a week ; that some duties are 
sacred while the rest are secular; that 
God is pleased with poverty, or sickness, 



The Law of Suggestion 129 

or anything short of "wholeness" — a 
whole man the whole time; that he may 
depend upon some one else doing what he 
can do for himself, will never come to the 
heights of self-mastery, and will get little 
of the joy and peace and power that is 
the right of a real Christian. Jesus found 
in his day that the greatest drawback to 
spiritual progress was that the people 
believed and knew so many things that 
were not true. Therefore he said, "Ye 
shall know the truth and the truth shall 
make you free." And this chapter sets 
forth why the truth in any realm of life 
cannot fail to produce the desired results. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE MATERIAL ACCESSORIES TO HEALTH. 

NO SCHEME of the spiritual philoso- 
phy of health can be complete which 
leaves out a due consideration of the ma- 
terial means that make for the welfare of 
the physical body which is the temple for 
the life of God that for a time dwells 
here. The body is a fact on hands and no 
amount of mental jugglery can alter that 
fact. Its welfare is tremendously in- 
fluenced by the materials that we take into 
it. It is the life of God expressed in ma- 
terial form just as the soul is the life of 
God expressed in immaterial form. The 
life of God is governed by certain laws of 
expression w T hich vary according to the 
form of life. If the Infinite life is ex- 
pressed in spiritual form then it flows into 
that form by direct spiritual contact of 
the individual life with the spirit of all 
life. If life is expressed in material form 
then it is constantly maintained by life 
imparted through material forms, as the 
living soil imparts its life to vegetation, 
and vegetation to the animal, and like- 
wise both of these to man's body. In 



Material Accessories to Health 131 

other words the human body receives liv- 
ing energy from various material forms 
such as food, water, air, etc., while his 
spiritual body receives its energy direct 
from God, and even here the process is 
greatly helped by certain symbols and ma- 
terial forms. No sane man expects his 
body to be fed by purely spiritual means 
without the agency of material forms. 
And there are certain laws by which 
these material agencies are made to min- 
ister their energy to the body most effi- 
ciently. To know these laws is the first 
duty of man. No reference is made here 
to materia medica because its use is as- 
sumed, and the physician is regarded as 
God's man dealing in divine forces which 
many people need at times to use. The 
author is not a physician and is writing 
for the people who do not need material 
remedies, and whose attention needs to be 
turned rather to the mental and spiritual 
forces in and about them. 

The body is made up of bones, muscles, 
nerves, tissues, and fluids. It seems to be 
adjusted to the one supreme purpose of 
furnishing a dwelling place for an unseen 
being that touches and fills every part of 



132 The Voice Eternal 

it and governs its every action from one 
ultimate center — the brain. Just how this 
connection is maintained between matter 
on the one hand and spirit on the other 
so that the vibrations of unconscious mat- 
ter become mental images in the conscious 
mind is largely speculative. We can tell 
all the steps taken by vibrations passing 
into the ear to the innermost chamber 
where it reaches the filaments of the audi- 
tory nerve and thence is carried to the 
brain where it reports as music, or words, 
or noise. That is probably as far as the 
reader cares to go with it. So with the 
question of extracting from food the en- 
ergy needed to keep up the body, we may 
trace all the steps and know the laws of 
nutrition, and still not be able to tell just 
how the same kind of food will give one 
form of energy to the blacksmith's arm, 
another to the fine texture of the poet's 
brain, and in still another case a subtle 
form of energy called personal magnet- 
ism. But we may know the building pro- 
cesses of the body, and the values of the 
various material agents and the methods 
of their use. 

One important fact is that the body is 



Material Accessories to Health 133 

forever changing. In this change two op- 
posing processes are at work. One is the 
constructive process whereby the body is 
built up ; the other is the destructive pro- 
cess whereby it is torn down. From the 
cradle to the grave this builder and de- 
stroyer are contending for the mastery. 
In childhood and youth the builder has the 
advantage; in manhood he maintains the 
supremacy; as we advance in years the 
destroyer slowly but surely gains the lead 
until the builder can no longer keep the 
body in repair as a fit instrument for the 
spirit of life and we move out to life on 
other planes of existence. In this process 
of building the matter of materials in the 
form of nutrition is the chief problem. 

There is a theory of medicine whose 
main hypothesis is that inasmuch as the 
body is composed of some twelve or more 
chemical salts maintained in proper pro- 
portion, its ills are caused by a dis- 
turbance of that proportion, and that 
by administering the needed salt, health 
would result with the restored bal- 
ance. For this purpose certain " tis- 
sue remedies" were prepared to carry 
out the theory. It needs only to be 



134 The Voice Eternal 

said that people continued to sicken and 
die at about the same rate as before. So 
also since that traditionary time when 
men deemed that they might "eat of the 
tree of life and live forever" men have 
dreamed of some sort of ideal food regime 
by which the body might be kept in per- 
manent repair. But the dream has not 
been realized, and the most fearful spec- 
ter that ever haunted the imagination of 
mankind was that of being compelled to 
live on century after century in this fail- 
ing human body. Whether the bound is 
set by the thought of humanity or by the 
will of the Infinite, we know that by some 
law it is appointed unto man to eventually 
move out of this temple of the body. Until 
that time we are concerned with the ques- 
tion of materials for the building and re- 
pairing of its ever changing cells. Nutri- 
tion is the supreme problem, and in this 
there is involved, First, the question of 
materials, and Second, the means of trans- 
porting them to the 1700 trillion cells of 
the body. For the cell is the unit. Its 
welfare means the welfare of the whole 
body. 

In the matter of materials there are five 



% Material Accessories to Health 135 

great classes of food elements which are 
as follows : 

I. Proteids. They contain among other 
constituents, Nitrogen, and are the flesh 
formers, the tissue builders of the body. 
The foods richest in proteids are milk, 
cheese, meat, eggs, all kinds of fish, wheat, 
beans, and oatmeal. These proteids be- 
come peptones during the process of diges- 
tion and are readily absorbed and are car- 
ried at once to feed the tissues. About 
twenty-one per cent of the food supply 
should be proteids. 

II. Fats. They are found in animal 
fats, vegetable oils, milk, butter, lard, etc. 
Fatty matters are very abundant in olives, 
sweet almonds and other nuts, chocolate, 
castor oil beans, hemp and flax seed. 
About ten per cent of the food supply 
should be fats. 

III. Carbo-Hydrates. These are prin- 
cipally sugars and starches. All starches 
are changed into sugars before they are 
digested, so that mention is made only of 
the principal starchy food supplies. Starch 
is found in wheat, corn, oats, and all 
grains ; in potatoes, peas, beans, the roots 
and stems of many plants, and in some 



136 The Voice Eternal 

fruits. Corn starch furnishes carbo-hy- 
drates in almost pure state. These are 
classed with fats as " non-nitrogenous " 
and they are the fuel furnishers for main- 
taining animal heat. About sixty-nine per 
cent of the food supply should be carbo- 
hydrates. 

IV. Water. Next to air it is the most 
important in preserving the life of the 
body. Seventy per cent of the body weight 
is water, and in order to maintain that 
proportion, and to furnish liquids for di- 
gestive and other purposes it is necessary 
to give the body from three and a half to 
four pints of liquids daily. It enters into 
the chemical composition of the tissues, 
rendering them pliable. It acts as a solv- 
ent in various ingredients of food and ren- 
ders them capable of absorption. It is the 
chief ingredient in all body fluids such as 
blood and lymph. Too great emphasis 
cannot be laid on the purity of the water 
we drink. 

V. Minerals. These are various salts 
of which Sodium-chloride (common table 
salt) and phosphate of lime are the most 
important. Common salt is present in all 
the body fluids, especially the blood. It is 



Material Accessories to Health 137 

contained in nearly everything we eat, but 
not in sufficient quantities to supply all 
the needs of the body, so it is added as a 
separate article of diet. Of all the min- 
eral salts, phosphate of lime is found in 
the largest quantity in the body. It enters 
into the composition of the bones v teeth, 
and cartileges, and gives firmness to^the 
tissues. Milk gives a large amount of 
phosphate of lime and is especially pro- 
vided for infants and all growing animal 
life. For the same reason there would 
seem to be a limit to its use among those 
advancing' in age. The use of these vari- 
ous salts is to regulate the specific gravity 
of blood and other body fluids; to pre- 
serve the chemical reaction of blood and 
excretions and secretions ; to preserve tis- 
sues from disorganization and putrefac- 
tion ; to control the rate of absorption ; to 
enter into the composition of bones and 
teeth ; to aid the blood to hold certain sub- 
stances in solution. It stimulates the ap- 
petite when taken in food and benefits gas- 
tric secretion. 

The quantity and kind of food required 
depends somewhat on the individual, the 
nature and amount of his work, and the 



138 The Voice Eternal 

climatic conditions under which he lives. 
Bread, milk, and water, with a certain 
amount of meat and fat, form the basis of 
all diets in the temperate zone, for they 
are the best sustainers of life. But as a 
mixed diet is manifestly best, other food 
materials are to be included. In order 
that all the tissues and fluids of the body 
may remain in good condition it is neces- 
sary that they receive in proper propor- 
tion all the ingredients necessary for their 
well being, in the form most agreeable to 
the individual and of the kind requiring a 
minimum of work in digesting it. 

Any scheme of diet that proposes to 
make one definite list of food supplies to 
suit everybody is to say the least falla- 
cious. Certain general principles, how- 
ever, may be safely followed. Hard 
labor calls for increasing amounts of 
all articles of food to make up for the in- 
creased wear and tear of such occupation. 
Fattening diet must increase the Carbo- 
hydrates. Reducing diet must lessen fats 
and carbo-hydrates and increase proteids. 
Brain tvork calls for easily digested foods. 
This simple outline is. given in the hope 
that the reader will ask his physician for 



Material Accessories to Health 139 

a good book on dietetics and read and 
practice it. 

Of almost equal importance with the 
question what shall we eat is the other one, 
how shall we eat? A characteristic sign 
of the times is, Gone to lunch — Back in 
ten minutes. Many a man digs his grave 
with his teeth, and many another digs it 
even more rapidly by failing to use his 
teeth. Digestion is both a chemical and 
a mechanical process. Mastication, the 
churning effect of the stomach, the peris- 
taltic and vermicular actions have to be 
thorough and vigorous. The first of these 
is dependent on the voluntary muscles. It 
will not do itself as the others will. And 
it must be done thoroughly. Every mouth- 
ful should be reduced to a semi-liquid — 
Fletcherized if you please, before swallow- 
ing. This not only prepares the food for 
the later mechanical actions, but also 
mixes the saliva with it, and thus prepares 
it for the action of the gastric juice, and 
the pancreatic juices, the bile and intes- 
tinal ferments. Not only does the process 
of digestion depend upon the thorough- 
ness of the mastication but also the still 
more important process of assimilation. 



140 The Voice Eternal 

What shall it profit a man if lie shall have 
all needed variety of food if it shall come 
to the digestive tract in such condition 
that the assimilative agencies shall be un- 
able to extract the substance from it? 
And one has but to study a chart of the 
intestinal tract to see that the millions of 
little mouths pumping away for nutrition 
as the food materials pass by demand that 
it shall be in as nearly a liquid state as 
possible. 

We come now to the question of trans- 
portation of the food materials to every 
cell of the body, and this is provided for 
by the circulation of the blood. It also 
carries Oxygen from the lungs to all the 
cells, and carries away carbon- dioxide, 
salts and acids to the various organs of 
elimination. The breathing has much to 
do with the effectiveness of this function 
of the circulation. It is surprising how 
many people live through life without find- 
ing out how to breathe properly. So im- 
portant is proper breathing that whole 
systems of natural healing make it their 
chief stock in trade. If you would get an 
idea of the " divine breath" and how much 
it contributes to well-being just take and 



Material Accessories to Health 141 

practice the following exercise: Place 
your hand on the abdomen just above the 
navel and inhale, pushing the hand out- 
ward, then as you exhale let the hand press 
inward. Practice this until you can do 
it well. Now place the hands astride the 
hips, thumbs behind, and after having in- 
haled as much as possible in the foregoing 
manner, bring into play the inter-costal or 
rib muscles, taking more breath with them 
and pushing the hands outward. Now 
with the muscles of the upper chest, which 
have so far been still, lift the chest while 
you inhale the last possible particle of air, 
and then exhale by reversing the process 
and you will have discovered nature's 
great blood purifier. Deep breathing in 
the open air, on sleeping porches, or with 
open windows is one of the first aids to re- 
covering vigor for the worn out body. 

The circulation of the blood and deep 
breathing are also related to exercise. 
Hardly one of the common ills from the 
discomfort of cold extremities to the more 
serious complaints of a torpid liver^ijuli- 
gestion, constipation, and what notarise* 
from poor circulation due largely to the 
lack of proper exercise. When Nebuchad- 



142 The Voice Eternal 

nezzar — a man given to having bad dreams 
— developed a clear case of liver trouble 
so that none of his court or friends could 
live with him, Daniel sent him out to walk 
on all fours and live on a vegetable diet 
until he came back to his right mind. The 
"Nebuchadnezzar walk" once or twice 
around the room on arising and retiring 
will work wonders in many forms of vis- 
ceral inaction. Aside from many systems 
of physical culture most all of which are 
beneficial, a thorough manipulation by a 
good mechano-therapist will work wonders 
in a worn out and nervously depleted or- 
ganism, and if repeated will keep the arte- 
ries young and the body in vigorous health. 
The care of the skin is an individual 
study. I remember to have read of an 
early saint of the church of whom it was 
said that, "he never trimmed his hair or 
beard, never ate meat, never drank wine, 
and never took a bath. ' ? He probably died 
of some kidney or lung trouble. Today 
one authority advocates the cold bath for 
every, sort of ill. Another calls for hot 
baths, mineral baths, electric light baths, 
or some other variety. There are people 
who can violate all the rules of sanitv as 



Material Accessories to Health 143 

well as sanitation and seem to suffer little 
immediate bad results. But the number is 
not large enough to be encouraging. Let 
every man be fully persuaded in his own 
mind just what is best for himself in the 
matter of caring for his skin. 

Doubtless there are many other points 
worthy of mention in the proper care of 
the body that if dwelt upon here would 
swell this chapter into the dimensions of a 
volume. Even this brief resume of the 
essentials might be taken to indicate that 
it is a lot of trouble to one's self to keep 
the body in health. But most of the care 
of the physical health is done automatic- 
ally as a matter of habit, so that if we learn 
the right way it is at least as easy as the 
wrong way, and we shall keep the temple 
clean and in perfect health, and be spared 
the distress of having to call in the doctor 
to cleanse it with a scourge of cords/ 



CHAPTER XIV. 

A NEW GENERATION 

THE primal impulse of the In- 
finite life is creation. And this 
creative impulse finds expression in 
living things to whom is also im- 
parted the creative impulse. The theo- 
logians have told us that the Infinite life 
is so perfect and so complete that it does 
not need anything to add to that complete- 
ness. Still they have felt the incongruity 
of perfect love that has no object but 
itself, or a perfect wisdom with no one to 
whom it could be exhibited. A hermit's 
existence does not appeal to a normal man, 
nor to God as an ideal existence. Hence 
for purposes at least of companionship in 
the Infinite life, the theologians have given 
us the conception of a trinity in which the 
one God lives in three expressions of 
being. Yfhatever may be said pro or con, 
this arrangement is a large provision for 
the social life of God. It is also the open- 
ing wedge for innumerable expressions of 
the Infinite life in carrying out the crea- 
tive impulse. For it is not just clear why 
the number of divine expressions should 



A New Generation 145 

be limited to three, when we find the 
Infinite life providing for further expres- 
sion by setting in motion innumerable 
agencies endowed with creative impulse 
and procreative power, all steadily moving 
upward into more perfect forms of expres- 
sion until at last, beings are evolved who 
are "the brightness of his glory and the 
express image of his person " — beings 
whom he calls his sons, is not ashamed to 
call them Brethren, and who shall be like 
him for they are one with him. 

The mighty volume of Nature reveals 
this process of moving up from uncon- 
cious cell-life to conscious God-life. 
Critically as we try w^e fail to find a satis- 
factory explanation of just how all these 
varying impulses seen in Nature arise, 
apart from the idea of the Infinite life 
pushing forward its creative impulse into 
expression. It is true that there are con- 
flicts in these movements, as when the 
moth's body obeys the universal impulse 
to follow the head, and when that head 
is contracted to one side by the light shin- 
ing upon it, Mr. Moth plumps into the 
flame before the impulse of self-preserva- 
tion can become operative. But out of 



146 The Voice Eternal 

such conflicting conditions by some pro- 
cess as " survival of the fittest," the 
higher forms of creation are reached. 
Now from the lowest forms of life to the 
highest the creative impulse is inherent 
in each form. Second only to the impulse 
to live, is the impulse to generate more 
of its kind. By some unerring instinct 
it finds the conditions that are favorable 
to that end, just as the blue bottle fly does 
not need to be instructed as to the com- 
parative values of fat and lean meat in 
the life of his progeny. He may alight 
anywhere but it is only when his feet 
touch the lean meat that the generative 
machinery is set going. Call it instinct 
resulting from countless experiences of 
his ancestors, or some automatic stimulus 
from the contact of his feet with the lean 
meat, the result is attained under proper 
conditions. 

Probably the bird in the forest cannot 
explain why, but knows only that the 
voice of one charmer alone sets the thrill 
of creative impulse going and hastens to 
its mating. Nor does animal life under- 
stand the mystery of mating. It merely 
obeys the creative impulse set in motion 



A New Generation 1-17 

by unerring agencies expressed in sound 
and color, and moves forward to its con- 
summation; and it is written that "not 
one of them shall lack her mate." 

And comparatively few human beings 
analyze the creative impulse. It is called 
love by poetic people, the grand passion, 
and other names equally appropriate ; and 
its divine quality arises out of this crea- 
tive impulse by which one man and one 
woman are drawn towards each other 
across continents and over seas unto the 
consummation of this divinely-given im- 
pulse to produce a new creation. The 
creative impulse within us finds its nor- 
mal office in the reproduction of its kind, 
and its abnormal expression is seen in 
large sections of our cities where reigns 
an Inferno of wasting, disease, and death 
that out-Dante's Dante. 

The secondary normal expressions of 
the creative impulse are seen in the marks 
of man's creative skill in providing the 
modern comforts of life, conveniences of 
travel, communication, learning, and 
labor. The world owes a vast debt of 
gratitude to such men as -George Ban- 
croft and such women as Frances E. 



148 The Voice Eternal 

Willard who have laid aside the sex 
expression of this creative impulse, and 
turned all their energies to the creation of 
great works and noble ideals of life. Let 
it be said, that for reasons known to 
themselves they have chosen the second- 
ary forms of creative expression, for the 
sex reference is the primal and distinc- 
tive characteristic of this creative im- 
pulse. Any of us can recall cases of 
young men or maidens becoming religious 
enthusiasts, with a burning desire to save 
mankind, or to enter the convent, or 
become a devotee of art or literature or 
the drama, etc., and in a large percentage 
of such cases, a happy marriage with the 
crown of fatherhood and motherhood has 
put an end to these enthusiasms for the 
time, because life has settled into its 
chosen and normal channel of expression. 
Now these early enthusiasms are not 
extinct, let us hope, for after the repro- 
ductive period of life with its cares and 
vicissitudes has passed, out of the ripe- 
ness of experience, and enrichment in 
knowledge, and deepened understanding, 
the creative impulse emerges upward into 
all those noble forms of expression in ser- 



A New Generation 149 

vice that makes the later half of life the 
crown and glory of manhood and woman- 
hood. 

Because of this creative impulse, su- 
perb, virile manhood and womanhood are 
always marked by a strong sexual organi- 
zation, and those who have wrought most 
and best and longest in the world of 
achievement have found that the conser- 
vation of these creative sexual energies 
in the body have tended to re-create the 
body itself, giving luster to the eye, reso- 
nance to the voice, vigor to the step, and 
abounding energy and health for the most 
arduous undertakings, \ It is claimed by 
deep students of the hidden forces within 
us, that by exercising the intention, the 
energies that might be dissipated in sexual 
excitements, may be transmuted into a 
vital fluid force and carried throughout 
the body, building it up, and regenerating 
it. Whatever truth the theory holds, one 
has but to know the unlimited command 
that the subconscious mind has over the 
bodily functions to realize what a tre- 
mendous suggestion lies in holding such a 
constructive idea in the mind; and that it 
will do the work even if the vital-fluid 



150 The Voice Eternal 

theory be incorrect., One has only to set 
the mind to the task, taking special times 
to instruct the subconscious mind just 
what we want it to do, and setting it to the 
task by the firm, unyielding pressure of 
the will, that it may know we intend to 
accomplish the task, and the regeneration 
of the body has begun and will be carried 
out to its completion — a fit temple for the 
living spirit to dwell in.^ 

Now it is also the"" opinion of great 
authorities in the medical world that the 
vast majority if not all cases of nervous 
and functional derangements of whatever 
form, arise out of and have a distinct sex 
reference. And these learned men are 
borne out in their contention by any one 
who has had any extended experience in 
dealing with the steadily increasing vol- 
ume of nervous cases coming up for treat- 
ment. Moreover, they are in substantial 
accord with the most authoritative book 
dealing with the historv of the human life 
— the Bible. It would seem wise then for 
some voice to sound a note of warning in 
the language of to-day, against the prodi- 
gal waste of energy by which past and 
present generations are filling the world 



A New Generation 151 

with a race of nervous wrecks; and to 
point out the rewards that accrue here and 
now to a w r ise husbanding of vital ener- 
gies, as the rational way by which a nor- 
mal manhood and womanhood may be real- 
ized and retained, and a new generation 
may be produced. 

If we would have even an approach to 
the ideal manhood and womanhood in the 
new generation, we cannot continue to 
practically ignore the volume of influence 
that heredity pours into our lives. In the 
last analysis of life God is the Author of 
it all. Not only is He the " Father of the 
spirits of all flesh/' but of the bodies as 
well. The body and soul are parallel mani- 
festations of the spirit of life, and all 
living things take on this dual character. 
Following the biologist back to the first 
living cell, we have a body and a soul. 
When this divided there were two bodies 
and two souls, the first body and soul 
being parents of the second body and soul. 
As this process multiplied, these cells 
became organized into various forms of 
organic life. Likewise the souls of these 
cells were co-ordinated by a sort of syn- 
thesis into one soul for the organic body. 



152 The Voice Eternal 

Inasmuch as each human body is an 
organization of many thousand trillions 
of cells taking form in the various organs 
of the body, and co-ordinating through 
various nerve centers into one supreme 
nerve center — the brain — and so making 
one body, it also follows that there are a 
similar number of cell-souls organized into 
departments corresponding to the organs 
of the body, and all synthesized into one 
supreme soul. Here let me remark that 
the value of "laying on of hands" in the 
healing of the sick has been recognized in 
all ages, not only for the stimulation of 
the nerve centers in the part affected, but 
by calling the attention of the mind to that 
part, and so centering its activities there. 
May it not also be true that when in treat- 
ment we place the hand on, say the stom- 
ach, or its controlling nerve center, the 
solar plexus, and direct that organ 
to properly perform its function, we are 
in reality directing that section of the soul 
which provides specifically over that or- 
gan, to do its duty in restoring normal 
functioning % 

Now when the first dual cell divided into 
two, it follows that the child took on the 



A New (xeneration 153 

characteristics of the parent cell, and 
through every variation and improvement 
this law of double hereditary influence 
held. It is seen in the human body in the 
vestigial remains of certain outgrown 
organs, as the little tip at the top of th6 
ear, the atrophied muscle that once moved 
the ear, which some people are still able to 
bring into action, the vermiform appen- 
dix, and some forty other insignia of our 
animal ancestry. As we have admittedly 
carried over these influences of our animal 
ancestry in our bodies, we shall also expect 
to find that we have carried over similar 
insignia of the character of our ancestry 
in our souls. Indeed these soul qualities 
are so marked that man is likened in the 
Bible to more than thirty different ani- 
mals — the bear, the fox, the ass, the hog, 
the peacock, and a good many more we 
have all known going about in human 
form. Add to this the further fact that if 
one traces his line of descent backward to 
the year A. D. 1000, he is the direct chan- 
nel for the mental and physical influence 
of sixteen million ancestors. Naturally the 
influence decreases as the square of the 
distance of the ancestors increases, our 



154 The Voice Eternal 

immediate parents influencing us more 
strongly as a rule than our grandparents. 
The children of the same parents often 
differ radically, for the reason that the 
conditions of mind, body, and environment 
were totally unlike at the time of genera- 
tion and gestation. In view of this line 
of hereditary influence, it is not difficult 
to answer the question why we are what 
we are. Now heredity with the environ- 
ment it produces may furnish settings for 
the problem of life in which we work out 
individual expressions of personal char- 
acter ; but the power that worketh in us is 
apart from these. The divine spirit living 
out its life in us is handicapped by these 
hereditary influences as it struggles to- 
ward perfect expression. The spirit- 
crowned man is the ideal that sets the pace 
for every man. We may not choose our 
ancestry but we may choose our destiny, 
and in doing so, we may so order the. 
ancestry of our posterity as to give it rad- 
ically different conditions under which to 
manifest the divine life. 

The creative impulse whose processes 
have produced these hereditary conditions, 
is more or less blind, moving in the gen- 



A New Generation 155 

era! direction of the reproduction of spe- 
cies. Animal creation which is conceded 
to be vastly superior to man in its develop- 
ment of instinct, has shown itself sus- 
ceptible of a marvelous improvement by 
the use of human reason in selecting males 
and females for the propagation of a given 
species. The vegetable world is eloquent 
with triumphs of intelligent selection over 
heredity by such men as Burbank. What 
stockman would in this day expose him- 
self to the ridicule of his fellows by allow- 
ing his flocks and herds and fowls to prop- 
agate without first eliminating the unfit 
of both sexes ? What horticulturist would 
trust his reputation or his fortune to the 
chance of " seedlings" when grafting of 
scions from better stock offers the cer- 
tainty of better variety and quality ? That 
the same results may be expected from 
rational selection in the mating of man- 
kind is seen in the proverb that " blood 
will tell." What then must be said of a 
civilization that wisely guides the creative 
impulse in the lower orders by eliminating 
the unfit, but reverses the order when if 
comes to the human species, allowing the 
physically, mentally, and morally defec- 



156 The Voice Eternal 

tive, the unsuited and the unsuitable, to 
multiply their kind ad infinitum, placing 
no sort of restraint on the process, but 
rather encouraging it by trying to make it 
legally and ecclesiastically impossible for 
such unfit and unsuitable pairs to end their 
relations. If one-half the legal enactment 
and energy now put forth to keep such 
mismated couples from getting apart, 
were used to keep them from getting to- 
gether in the first place, humanity would 
be better served. This stricture is not 
intended to condone the ever-increasing 
mental and moral epidemic of divorce, but 
rather to insist that the portals of entry 
to matrimony and the parenthood should 
be at least as strenuously guarded as are 
its exits. It is beyond the purpose of this 
chapter to even suggest methods, but 
rather to arouse conviction; for let the 
seriousness of the need become apparent, 
humanity will find the best way, and a 
tremendous stride will be taken toward the 
new generation of a superior race of God- 
like men and women. 

The ideal generation awaits not only a 
procession of rational selection under the 
supervision of calm judgment rather than 



A New Generation 157 

blind passion, but it is still further 
deferred by the culpable ignorance of 
prospective parents concerning the influ- 
ence of nervous, mental, and moral states 
upon the unconceived and the unborn. Out 
of three sections of moral monstrosity — 
murder, adultery, and theft — which have 
shown an alarmingly increasing volume, 
let us study the first for a moment and no 
doubt can remain as to the influence of 
prenatal states. Take a case from the 
criminal docket where a boy of nineteen 
killed his mother and father. Society pro- 
ceeded to murder him legally for illegally 
murdering his parents, forgetting that he 
w T as an unwelcome child whom his mother 
had wanted to murder and perhaps tried 
to do so before he was born. In the vast 
majority of such cases the facts are not 
available, but when they do become known 
they leave no possible room for doubt as 
to the truth and pertinency of a proverb 
from a very old book, viz., "The parents 
have eaten sour grapes and the children's 
teeth are set on edge." In addition to these 
prenatal influences, and those of legal kill- 
ing by the state, recall also the age-long 
effects of war which has killed a billion 



158 The Voice Eternal 

and a half of people since the song " Peace 
on earth" was first sung, and which has 
created a spirit of wholesale murder that 
is still fostered by the cultivation of the 
spirit of militarism. Grant that the dis- 
tracted mother had extenuating circum- 
stances for her thought and act ; and that 
the state is justified in taking the life of 
the killer; and that the nation may cele- 
brate the slaughter of the enemy that 
threatened its integrity, we nevertheless 
face the fact that all these have fostered 
a disregard for the sanctity of human life, 
and have created a world-wide atmosphere 
of thought through the agency of the press 
that daily spreads out the harrowing de- 
tails of murder, leaving in the minds of 
the susceptible a residuum out of which 
further murders are born. Happily a cru- 
sade for a cleaner press, a better inform- 
ing education, offers hope. Students of 
criminology are setting the motive of pen- 
ology away from vengeance on the crim- 
inal in the direction of rational restraint 
and treatment of the mentally, morally, 
and nervously deformed sections of society 
who have heretofore been given short 
shrift, while arbitration is proving that 



A New Generation 159 

right makes might among men rather than 
that might makes right. 

Now while the influence of heredity and 
the thought atmosphere in which we live 
must be put to rights in the interest of a 
new generation, we must not lose sight of 
our divine birthright in whose infinite 
power we are able to overcome all these 
adverse influences. It is no unusual phe- 
nomenon for a man who for half of his 
life has lent himself to dissipation, to such 
a degree that it seemed a disease or obses- 
sion, who had no higher ideals, and the lack 
of will powder or disposition to attain them 
if he had them, yet into such a life came 
the great love of a noble woman, the mem- 
ory of a mother 's prayer and life, brought 
back by song or story or providence, 
or the revelation of the moral per- 
fections of the Eternal God through 
the lips of a prophet or the life of 
a saint, and lo, there has come a revulsion 
of feeling, and the birth of new mental and 
spiritual ideals and motives that have car- 
ried with them a corresponding reaction in 
his physical nature, restoring his nervous 
organism to its normal condition, making 
his after-life as healthy as it was formerly 



160 The Voice Eternal 

diseased. Now men explain such a phe- 
nomenon in various ways, but it is the way 
of the Infinite Life righting a wrong condi- 
tion and restoring a man to his standing as 
a conscious son of God — a new generation 
with possession of all the powers and priv- 
ileges that consciousness of oneness with 
God imparts to a man. 

Such a miracle of grace is cause for 
endless gratitude to God, but the stubborn 
fact remains that such a case is the excep- 
tion and not the rule, and that the good 
God puts the responsibility of a new gen- 
eration on us. We must create heredities, 
and environments, and a worthy ancestry 
for our posterity. Then only will the king- 
dom of heaven be fully established on the 
earth. i 



CHAPTER XV. 

EMOTIONAL CHEMISTRY. 

THOUGHT forces are creative. Es- 
pecially when they are born in the 
emotional nature. "As a man thinketh 
in his heart so is he." So he looks, so he 
acts, so he feels, so he is. We have all 
quoted the Master's words, "Keep thy 
heart with all diligence, for out of it are 
the issues of life," but we have perhaps 
never thought how profound an influence 
the affectional and emotional nature has 
upon the health as well as the character 
of men. Desires born in our affections 
and emotions do color our thinking, give 
wings to our imaginations, bias our judg- 
ments, and influence our wills. We accept 
the facts but do not suspect the subtle 
chemistry by which sure and certain path- 
ological changes are wrought in the chem- 
ical secretions of the bod} r , as a result of 
our emotions. 

Such emotions as Anger, Fear, Jeal- 
ous} 7 , Hatred, Worry, the Blues, and all 
the dark passions change the alkaline se- 
cretions to acid, and the acid to alkaline, 
and fill the body with subtle poisons w 7 hich 



162 The Voice Eternal 

affect unfavorably all the tissues, for the 
nourishing elements for the cells are in- 
complete, the nerves are starved, and the 
whole system becomes depleted, and this 
lowered vitality invites all sorts of germs 
to come in and take up their abode and 
multiply. Our knowledge of emotional 
chemistry is yet in its infancy, but we do 
know that sudden bad news takes away 
the appetite, causes fainting, and other 
physical ills. We know that anger is fol- 
lowed by headache, lassitude, and weak- 
ness. We know that fear temporarily 
paralyzes the nerve centers of the stomach 
and heart; while hurry and worry and 
others burn up the nervous energies, leav- 
ing only clinkers and slag to irritate the 
nerves. Cases are on record showing that 
a violent fit of anger in a nursing mother 
caused poisonous secretions in her milk 
which threw the baby into spasms. The 
perspiration and saliva show chemical re- 
action so that it is possible to detect the 
particular emotion that held sway at the 
time the secretion was made. 

Every mental healer is familiar with the 
occasional cases arising in his healing 
ministry in which the patient was per- 



Emotional Chemistry 163 

ceptibly worse after the first treatment, 
owing to the conflict between the old 
chemical forces caused by the wrong 
methods of thinking and the new chemis- 
try, caused by the new and healing truth. 

The ancient Stigmatists, in their long- 
ing to reproduce in their own bodies the 
physical marks of the crucifixion believed 
that they could, and persisted in their as- 
cetic and rigorous exercises until they 
actually succeeded in causing the stigmata 
to appear in hands, feet and side. And 
this emotional chemistry is the secret of 
their success. And this sort of morbid 
emotional thinking is able to cause such 
alterations of tissue as to defy the elect 
physician to tell whether a disease is or- 
ganic or functional. Keep it up and you 
will secrete enough poison to keep the 
body filled with disease, and "enjoy poor 
health" all your days. 

The old metaphysicians conceived the 
idea that disease had its origin in unwhole- 
some emotions, for they prepared a long 
list of ills with their emotional causes. 
For instance, covetousness or impatience 
would cause bad breath ; doubt, fear, etc., 
would produce asthma; hot temper and 



164 The Voice Eternal 

jealousy produced boils, and so on through 
a long list of the various ills that found 
their correspondence in some mental state. 
Now one would not care to subscribe to 
that whole list, but they were grasping at 
the truth that ill thoughts do cause a 
change in the chemical secretions of the 
body and so open it to the attacks of all 
sorts of disease. An evil mentality with 
its wrong thought habits will throw the 
whole body into the wrong kind of chem- 
istry and make it a shining mark for all 
sorts of ills. 

Now if a momentary spasm of anger or 
other evil passion can produce such effects 
as are apparent in the lives of multitudes, 
what must be the effect on the bodies of 
those who live in one perpetual spasm of 
anger, fear, worry, jealousy and the like? 
They are filled with deadly poisons and 
ought to carry a red light in front of them 
as the old drug stores used to do. It really 
isn't necessary, for as a man thinketh in 
his heart so he looks. You can tell him as 
far as you can see him. 

Think of the effects on the life of one 
who has lost friends, to clothe himself 
in black and keep the insignia of sorrow 



Emotional Chemistry 165 

ever before them and others and be com- 
pelled to live up to it, and constantly whet 
the keen edge of grief, by these heathen 
signs of sorrow. When I pass out, if my 
friends respect my feelings and faith they 
will all wear wiiite, for the Christian hope 
I sis the whitest light this world has ever 
seen. 

Comparatively little has been done to 
determine the chemistry of right thinking, 
although the praises of cheerfulness have 
been sung to every sort of time and tune. 
Few people know or really care just how 
one material substance will start or stop 
the chemical action of another material 
substance. All they care to know is that 
every poison has its antidote. But they 
need to know this very minute that there is 
a law of mental and spiritual chemistry 
by which every passion that disturbs the 
poise of the soul, upsets the mind, and fills 
the body with disease has its antidote, and 
that the great trinity of spiritual poten- 
cies abide under the label of FAITH, 
HOPE and LOVE. Over against your 
anger and all its horrid brood put LOVE. 
Replace hurry, worry and anxiety with 
HOPE. Instead of fear put calm confi- 



1G6 The Voice Eternal 

dence in the unfailing goodness of your 
Heavenly Father, and in your own ability 
to achieve what you undertake, and these 
will set the chemical secretions right and 
fill the body with ease, health, and power 
and make living a perpetual joy. For you 
will become in body, mind, and spirit a 
tangible expression of the emotional state 
in which your soul lives. Therefore, if 
you will have your body filled with sensa- 
tions of health, sweetness, and power, fill 
your emotional life with faith-emotions, 
hope-emotions, love-emotions, for these 
stimulate the right chemistry, and the 
greatest of these is love, for it is the most 
far-reaching, contagious thing in the 
world. For it blesses the giver until ' ' out 
of his heart shall flow rivers of living wa- 
ter," and it blesses the receiver, for he 
becomes eventually an artesian well to re- 
fresh the weary passer-by with his testi- 
mony. 

It must be said here that we have not yet 
solved the secret of how Jesus of Nazareth 
set up such chemical changes in the bodies 
of men as to heal all sorts of diseases, but 
it probably lies in the fact that we do not 



Emotional Chemistry 167 

do it because we do not believe we can do 
it. But we shall know the meaning of this 
divine chemistry, and the time ought to 
come when we shall know how to call upon 
these divine agencies with such a sense of 
mastery, that we shall produce a civiliza- 
tion that shall have no moral and no dis- 
ease-death rate, and " whose inhabitants 
shall never say *I am sick.' " 

(Reprinted from The Emmanuel Press.) 



CHAPTER XVI. 

FORMULAS AND AFFIRMATIONS FOE SELF- 
HELP. 

THE way to self-mastery is so plain 
that the wayfaring man, though a 
fool need not err therein. The following 
formula is a workable statement of the 
forces that bring things to pass. Its par- 
allel with the spiritual philosophy of life 
is perfect. You need not spend years of 
time and dollars in money for lessons. 
Just take hold of the handles of this men- 
tal battery and hold on until its full power 
gets into operation. Something will hap- 
pen. You will learn how to help yourself. 
There are four factors in the formula: 

1. The IDEAL. It matters not 
whether it be perfect health, or personal 
influence and power among men, or pros- 
perity in your material affairs. Just fill 
out the picture mentally. Imagine your- 
self as in the possession of this ideal. Pic- 
ture yourself as being surrounded by 
every feature of your ideal. Don't affirm 
that you are when as yet you are not, but 
build an air castle as complete as your 
imagination can finish it, and then go in 



Formulas for S elf-Help 189 

and take mental possession of it. Do this 
seven times a day. 

II. The DESIKE. Earnestly desire 
the reality of your ideal. Wishing a thing 
to be true is the first step to believing that 
it can be true, and that is next to willing 
that it shall be true. Earnestly desire it 
for your own comfort and success. Wish 
it to be real for the good you may be able 
to do unto others. Long for it that you 
may more fully express the divine life in 
you, and so honor the God "whose you are 
and whom you serve." And in another 
word this is prayer, for "Prayer is the 
soul's sincere desire, uttered or un- 
exDressed ' * 

III. The BELIEF. Earnestly believe 
in the "power that is within both to will 
and to do." Take that power into your 
confidence. You trust it to keep your heart 
beating, your blood circulating, the diges- 
tive and assimilative processes going, and 
in fact you leave to it in perfect confidence 
all the metabolism or changes to be made 
in the body without a doubt as to the out- 
come. You lie down to sleep at night with- 
out a question that it will keep your heart 
beating. If you had an idea that it would 



170 The Voice Eternal 

stop during the night you wouldn't sleep a 
wink that night. Now if you can put so 
much confidence in this hidden intelligent 
force inside you, just pull out one more 
stop, and believe that it will do these things 
just as you want them done. Intelligently 
direct it to do things just as you want them 
done, instead of some haphazard way, and 
you will find that it will keep the confi- 
dence inviolable. "According to your 
faith it shall be done unto you. ' ' 

IV. The WILL. This is the directing 
agent. It comes next in order, for, ' i Faith 
laughs at impossibilities, and cries, 'it 
shall be done.' " Every force in your life 
and outside of it pivots finally on your 
will. "Be it unto thee even as thou wilt" 
makes "all power in heaven and in earth," 
subject to that will. You can be anything 
you believe you can be and that you will 
to be. Will is the creative power. It takes 
the unseen things and makes them appear 
to the eyes or other senses. It takes your 
ideals and erects them into realities. 

Follow then this formula, and it will 
bring strength out of weakness, ease out of 
disease, plenty out of penury, and personal 
power out of impotence. 

(Reprinted from The Emmanuel Press.) 



Formulas for Self-Help 171 



AFFIRMATIONS. 

For CHAPTER I. 

All Life is One. 

I am an expression of that one life. 
I am one with infinite life. 
Infinite life dwells in me and fills me with 
health, peace, and plenty. 

CHAPTER II. 

I live out my life in the life of God. 
God lives out his life in me. 
I will now manifest the life of God in perfect 
health, peace, and plenty. 

CHAPTER III. 

I will now move up into a higher expression 

of the divine life. 
I accept pain as a growing pain sailing me up 

to higher manifestation of life. 
I am one with love that casteth out fear. 

CHAPTER IV. 

I identify my life now with the life of God. 
I am One with God. 
I can do all things through Christ. 
I will now manifest divine peace, health, and 
plenty. 

CHAPTER V. 

I believe in one God, the infinite spirit. 



172 The Eternal Voice 



The life of the spirit is imparted to me every 

moment. 
I accept every material thing as an expression 

of the spirit in material form. 
My body receives life from the spirit's life in 

material forms. 

CHAPTER VI. 

I am health, peace, power, plenty. 

I will dispel fear with love. 

Weakness shall flee before the idea of power. 

I will forget my troubles by helping others. 

CHAPTER VII. 

The limitless life of God is in me. 

I will trast and not be afraid. 

I will to be well, happy, and prosperous. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

"I believe in love almighty, maker of heaven 

on earth/ f 
My hope is in God who dwelleth in me. 
I will steadfastly trust to the end. 

CHAPTER IX. 

Christ is all in all to me. 

Christ is health, strength, peace, plenty. 

Christ dwelleth in me. 

I will now manifest Christ. 



Formulas for Self -Help 173 



CHAPTER X. 

All power is given me by the spirit. 
He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. 
The spirit manifests the things of Christ in 
me. 

CHAPTER XI. 

I am the master of the house. I am the 

architect. 
My subconscious is the servant, the builder. 
He shall build my plans, and report only 

normal sensation. 
My body is the temple of God. It shall be 

clean and well. 
I will honor God by living in perfect health. 



Foster Sc Short, 342 Howard St., S. p. 



The How and Why of 
The Emmanuel Movement 

By 
Thomas Parker Boyd 

An analysis of the mental forces that make for 
health. It tells just how to use them and what may 
be expected to result from their right use. It is a 
great book on a great subject, and in the language of 
the common people. 

It has been praised by hundreds of enthusiastic 
readers. 

It will be sent postpaid for $1.00. 

Address all orders to THE EMMANUEL PRESS, 
Berkeley, Cal. 



The Emmanuel Press 

Edited by 
Thomas Parker Boyd 

Devoted to the fine Art of being well. 

A live wire among New Thought magazines. 

The purpose of the magazine is to create a literature 
devoted to health from the standpoint of the church as 
well as that of modern science. 

It aims to conserve the things that are good, and to 
teach a rational and spiritual philosophy of human well 
being, to harmonize the old and new and to lay em- 
phasis on the whole truth instead of a single phase 
of it. 

It teaches the harmonious use of spiritual, mental, 
and material means, and advocates the clergyman, the 
psychologist, and the doctor as being God's men and 
agents for health. 

Price 10 cents per copy, or $1.00 per year. 

Address all orders to THE EMMANUEL PRESS, 
Berkeley, Cal. 



DEC 9 1912 






